


Another Day Colder

by latenightsomefins



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2018-07-15 12:22:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 32,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7222183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/latenightsomefins/pseuds/latenightsomefins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Abby…”<br/>The voice broke through the silence of the early morning, and Abby, previously engrossed in a medical book at her desk, glanced up to find Raven and Octavia in the doorway.<br/>The look in both of their eyes meant something was not right.<br/>“What’s wrong?” she spoke.<br/>Raven glanced behind at Octavia, and the girl nodded for her to speak.<br/>“Clarke’s gone.”<br/>`````<br/>Or the AU where everyone needs Lexa's help to find Clarke because Arkadia is falling apart too fast for them to leave her out in the wilderness. They need Clarke's help, and as much they don't want it, they need Lexa's help too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginning Again

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be working on this a little bit more than my other story because that one isn't going as well as I hoped it would. Also next chapter there won't be as much back and forth between Clarke and Arkadia.

“Abby…”

The voice broke through the silence of the early morning, and Abby, previously engrossed in a medical book at her desk, glanced up to find Raven and Octavia in the doorway.

The look in both of their eyes meant something was not right.

“What’s wrong?” she spoke.

Raven glanced behind at Octavia, and the girl nodded for her to speak. 

“Clarke’s gone.”

`````

The girl had left in the middle of the night, when everyone was asleep, when the moon shined bright, when no one was there to tell her to stay. She left without saying anything to anyone, snuck out the little-known exit of the Arkadia compound. With a small pack, full of food she had been stocking up on for the few days before that, water, clothes, and weapons, she leapt into the light of the moon under the trees.

And then she was gone.

`````

“What the hell do you mean she’s gone?” Abby nearly yelled, jumping from her chair, knocking the book she was reading down at the same time.

Raven backed into Octavia slightly, and put a hand out towards the woman before her. “She left last night. No one has seen her all morning and the door for the secret exit was cracked open.”

At this news, Abby swayed in her spot and fell back into her seat.

“Why did she leave?”

Another glance to Octavia.

“The people on either side of Clarke’s room said they could hear her screaming at night.”

`````

The images were too much. In the light, fleeting images of children, men and women, her own friends, showed themselves in corners and doorways everywhere she went. In the dark, nightmares so strong and so real plagued her sleep. Her only options at night was to face the terrors or stay awake all night, but the second option only worked until she passed out from exhaustion and woke again to another nightmare.

The walls of Arkadia reminded her too much of the Mountain, and there was no way for her to tolerate the metal, the lights, the technology that was so like the Mountain. She needed to leave.

`````

“Why wouldn’t she just tell someone…” Abby muttered to herself.

At this, Octavia stepped forward, mumbling, “Abby, you know how Clarke is.”

The woman snapped, turning to Octavia and grabbing the collar of the girls shirt. A crash and some rustling later and Octavia was pressed against the wall of the doorway next to Raven. Octavia had to hold up a hand to ensure that Raven wouldn’t do anything as Abby clenched and unclenched the girl’s shirt.

“Why wouldn’t she tell me.”

Octavia softened. “She’s been hurting since before the Mountain, Abby.”

The woman’s eyes welled with tears.

“Finn. The Grounders. The Commander. She’s been hurting from the moment we landed in the dropship.”

`````

“Clarke.”

She ignored the sound of the pale, long-haired boy next to her in the early morning light, and focused instead on the dark blood of her kill on her hands. She began smearing it all in her hair, on her face, her arms. Everything exposed was to be covered by the substance.

“Clarke, look at me.”

The girl shoved her hands deep into the stomach of the animal before her and pulled them back out, blood soaked all the way to her elbows. Knowing it wasn’t enough, she shoved her head into the warm, sticky mess of the carcass, shuffling her head around to catch more of it on her hair.

“Clarke!”

Her head whipped around to face him. “What.”

He smiled at the rabid girl before him.

“I knew I could get you to crack.”

`````

“How do we get her back?”

“See that’s the thing.” Octavia grimaced. “We don’t know where she is and how to find her. She could be anywhere.”

Abby’s face scrunched up. “Well then get someone who can find her!”

“Abby, we don’t have connections to anyone outside of Arkadia anymore,” Raven interjected, pulling Octavia back from the woman before them slightly. “Not anymore.”

When Abby looked up next, her eyes were dark, and she pushed through her teeth, “Find someone.”

`````

“You know they’ll come get you right, Clarke?”

“Shut up,” she mumbled with a slight flick of her head.

Before Finn and Clarke was a small group of deer, but one could hardly call them deer based off of the unnatural features they had. Clarke payed close attention to their movements, holding her gun out in front of her.

“I just need food…” she muttered, low under her breath.

“You wouldn’t need to hunt if you had just stayed,” Finn mumbled, sitting beside Clarke in the dirt.

“Shut up.”

“Right, yeah. Shut up, Finn shut up.” He rolled his eyes at her. “That’s all you’ve been saying to me lately.”

“Shut up.”

Click.

Bang.

_Boom, dead._

“You’re going to run out of ammo soon.”

Clarke rushed out from the bushed, pulling her knife from her belt. Quickly, she pushed it into the animal’s neck, muttering as she did so.

“Yu gonplei ste odon.”

Finn shuffled up to Clarke and the animal. “Seriously, Clarke, you’re gunna starve.”

“Can’t you let me have one victory?” she spoke, turning over her shoulder to stare at the boy above her.

“I’m afraid not, Clarke.”

`````

“Abby, you’re not going to like what I have to say.”

She glanced up from her desk for the millionth time that night to find Raven again in the doorway.

“I don’t think I’ll like anything until Clarke is home. So stop trying to shelter me.”

“The only thing I can think of to find Clarke is to go straight to the Commander.”

Abby’s gaze shifted up to Raven, and the frown on her face deepened. “Why would you even think to bring that up to me?”

“No one else agrees with me, but what other options do we have, Abby! Clarke is out there, probably about to get herself killed. We need to find her and the Commander could know someone who can…”

A glance to the doorway, a clenched fist, a tense room.

“No.”

`````

“Wanheda?”

“Sha, Klark kom Skaikru,” the Grounder woman before her eyed her warily as she glanced down at the array of knives before her.

“…the Commander of Death.”

“Em gets bilaik name kom the maun.” (She gets the name from the Mountain.)

Clarke glanced up at the woman to find her looking at her with worry, almost as if she knew who she was, as if she knew she wasn’t Trikru, knew she didn’t belong.

“Ai will teik disha won,” (I will take this one) she mumbled, grabbed one of the knives on the table, then glanced at one of the bows hung on the wall. “En bilaik.” (And that)

`````

“Abby, _please_.” Raven pushed through the fog of the room.

“I won’t let that _girl_ anywhere near my daughter.”

“The Commander can help us, Abby! She can find Clarke!”

“Raven, I said no!”

“ _Please_ , you have to see that this is our only option!”

Silence called through the room like a bell, and Abby slumped onto the old chair in the room, laying her head calmly into her open hands.

“We have no other choices.”

At the click of the hour from the clock on the wall, marking the 30th day since Clarke’s abandonment, Abby realized there really was no other option.

They needed Lexa.


	2. Challenge Accepted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Octavia makes the journey to Polis to get help from Lexa and Clarke descends further into the madness that the woods brings around her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so yeah, Clarke's image is probably gunna be slightly different than what she looks like at the beginning of season 3 but we'll get there sometime. Idk. I'm tired and I should stop talking.

“Send someone for Lexa.”

“Abby, they won’t just let us in. Plus we don’t even know the exact location of Polis,” Octavia mumbled from her place on Abby’s computer chair at the desk.

Before her, Abby paced back and forth, and Raven resisted the urge to hold a hand out to the woman to make her stop. Octavia found it all oddly amusing, watching Abby rush from one side of the room to the other and listening to Raven’s heavy sigh with each repetitive motion.

“You were the one who convinced me we needed Lexa, so find someone who can get an audience.”

Raven turned to her left, eyeing Octavia. “Would they let you in?”

“Heda always thought of me as one of Trikru and Skaikru, but I don’t know where I stand with her right now. The guards might kill me the second they see me if they consider me Skaikru.”

“Well aren’t you?”

A sigh and a squeak of chair later and Octavia moved to place her head onto her hand, leaning against the armrest.

“I’m not getting into this right no—.”

“We need to talk to Lexa.”

Abby’s pacing ceased—Raven almost leapt into the air in happiness—and she pushed her gaze onto the two resting girls before her.

“We need Lexa.”

Raven sighed for what must have been the millionth time that night and pushed herself onto the desk, her leg clicking against the leg of the table.

“We know that.”

Abby frowned. “Well then get someone to talk to Lexa.”

Another sigh.

Octavia spoke, “We’ve been going back and forth for hours now. We need Lexa and we know that. And we also know we can’t get into Polis without one, a Grounder taking us there and two, risking them killing us for being Skaikru.”

Abby stepped forward.

“Figure it out.”

`````

A scream and a slash and blood was drawn.

The animal, similar to a panther or puma, lurched forward onto it front paws and tumbled to the ground. Clarke rushed to its side, her knife already out and heading towards the big cat’s neck. A smooth entrance and the victim was dead.

The red of blood on her hands no longer scared Clarke. It no longer made her stomach toss and turn and she didn’t lose her appetite. The stains of blood on her clothes and skin—her’s and the cat’s—only gave her advantages in the wild and among Grounders. 

Clarke no longer felt anything towards death.

And as she pulled her kill off the path made by the flow of ants in the morning, she came to realize something.

_I really am Wanheda…_

The realization did less than surprise her.

_Must have known it a long time ago._

Clarke took to the habit of barely speaking these days. After spending time in the woods, where silence was key, and among Grounders who could easily pick out the Skaikru accent she still held, she found that the less she talked the better.

Not even Finn’s rambling at her side could break her silence.

“Come on, Clarke,” he would say. “Talk to me. I’m getting bored after hearing only my voice for so long.”

“Shut up,” she would occasionally let out, but that only prompted him to talk more.

When she wasn’t mumbling obscenities to herself or Finn, Clarke was collecting food, water, weapons from Grounder villages, anything to give her something to do. 

The more time she spent in the wilderness, however, the less she felt she even needed these things.

`````

“Just let me go,” Octavia pushed through the air. “They won’t kill me, and if I can go to TonDC, I can get someone to take me to the Capital.”

“Octavia, it’s dangerous,” Raven mumbled.

“I’ll be fine. I’ve proven I’m a warrior to them before. They won’t kill me.”

“We aren’t worried about _them_ killing you,” Abby spat.

“Just give me a horse and a week and I’ll be back with someone to find Clarke.”

“Fine.”

 

With a horse under her reign and her sword on her back, Octavia stood at the exit of Arkadia, the gates opening slowly under the control of the guard. She shuffled and rocked back and forth on the animal, trying to find a comfortable position for the possibly long journey she was about to embark on.

Maybe two days if all went well.

_It never did._

“O, what the hell are you doing?”

_Dammit, Bellamy._

She looked to her left on the horse to find her brother sprinting his way towards the exit where she was. The glare on her face must have been what made him stop.

“Where are you going?”

“TonDC, and then Polis.”

His frown deepened as he spoke, “What the hell do you need the Grounders for.”

Looking over her right shoulder, she could see the gates were finally fully opened, and the guard was looking at her with impatience.

She turned back to Bellamy. “We need Clarke.”

His eyes traveled quickly back to the building and his lips seemed to quirk into a small smile. “Clarke’s just inside, Octavia.”

_Of course he wouldn’t know._

“Clarke ran away, Bellamy. I need to go get her..”

“Clarke didn’t _run away._ I would know if she did.”

She almost laughed. “You would know if you didn’t spend so much time with _Pike._ ”

At this, she pulled on the horse and its front legs kicked off the ground in surprise. It’s hooves hit the soft dirt with a thump and pushed out of Arkadia.

`````

It was on her thirty-second day on her own that she found Niylah’s.

The hunks of meat from her last kill were going bad, but she had no idea how to preserve them for more than a day at most. 

After speaking with a few Grounders from one village, she heard of a small trading post seven miles North of there. There they could salt and dry the meat and exchange portions of it with the owner as payment.

She began the journey not ten minutes after hearing about it.

“Yu gada som in na kof op?” (You have something to trade?) a girl said almost as soon as she walked through the door.

She looked up in shock, and stuttered as she pushed out, “Steiks.”

Quickly, she pulled out the handmade pack that held her meat, and set its contents onto the counter in front of the girl. Its weight caused the counter to groan.

The girl’s eyebrow lifted in surprise and she looked up at Clarke curiously.

“Yuj,” (Strong) she murmured, and shrugged her shoulders slightly.

The girl just nodded in response.

“Chit yu gaf in?” (What do you need?)

“Ga flea op en ga son op.” (Salted and dried)

“Biga cat?” (Big cat)

Clarke nodded, and the girl turned around her right shoulder, grabbing the back of meat and slinging it over her shoulder at the same time, and briskly walking to the back of the shop.

“Em teiks tu weeks,” (It takes two weeks) the girl said, once emerged from the back.

Clarke just nodded, not trusting her words, and turned back to look at merchandise of the shop.

“Ai lid in mo?” (Can I bring more?) Clarke mumbled after a while.

When she looked up, she could see the girl nodding her head yes, and moving her hand to reach out to her.

“Niylah.”

Clarke, hesitant at first, reached out to grasp Niylah’s hand.

“Klark,” she muttered, squeezing the girl’s wrist.

She stepped back, and broke eye contact with the girl.

“Mochof,” (Thank you) she stated, grabbed her pack from where she had placed it on the counter, and walked out the door of the shop.

`````

When Octavia reached TonDC, she expected there to be outcry about a Skaikru girl in a Trikru village, but I guess they had assumed she would show up someday.

“Octeivia, what a surprise to see you,” one man had said, a small smirk on his face.

Jumping off of her horse, she quickly shook hands with the man.

“Osiris,” the man says, and Octavia nods. “What can I do for you?”

“I need someone to take me to Polis.”

At this, Osiris’s head quirks to the side slightly, and asks, “What do you want with Heda?”

Octavia sensed the distrust in him as she spoke, “One of our leaders has gotten lost in the forest and hasn’t found her way back for weeks. We need Heda’s help to find her.”

The smirk reappeared over the distrust.

“Has your precious Wanheda left you, Skaikru?”

Octavia’s frown deepens.

_I’m not Skaikru._

But she ignored it. 

“Wanheda?”

“Klark kom Skaikru, the Commander of Death. She wanders the forest as of late, from what I hear of her. Does your fragility need her power to protect Skaikru?” he said, the smirk on his face growing with each word, until Octavia could’t help but feel like wiping it off herself.

“We wouldn’t need the help if Heda hadn’t left us at the mountain.”

His smirk disappeared.

_Score._

He leaned forward. “You sound as if you have a deathwish, Octeivia kom Skaikru.”

She leaned forward as well. “I am not Skaikru.”

“Then why are you out and about doing their work?”

She clenched her teeth in an attempt not to snap, and pushed out, “Because I want my friend back.”

At this, he laughed, and backed away from the tiny terror that is Octavia.

“One of my men can take you to Polis,” he bellowed, walking towards one home of the village. 

“Mochof, Osiris!” she called out after him.

He stopped walking, however, and turned back to Octavia, a serious look in his eye. “But remember, Octeivia…

“Your friend won’t ever be the same.”

`````

She had taken to the idea of war paint and masks.

It dazzled her.

They way that some soldiers covered their faces with black or white, in patterns based off of their clans or villages or _anything_ that they felt was worthy enough to go to war for. They put their hearts into their war paint.

Their masks represented their lives. Their clothes represented their lives. The fades grey and black of bones and skulls the Grounders wore showed just what kind of an upbringing they had.

It reflected them.

And she didn’t reflect anything good.

She began to wipe white paint across her face, which she found brought out the darkness in her eyes and the red in her hair. One Grounder told her the marks reminded her of a reaper or someone of Azgeda. The woman had called it something off-putting, and for Clarke, that meant less people for her to talk to. 

After traveling to villages, she found that a Skaikru jacket was a dead giveaway for who she was, and instead wore an old leather jacket that one Grounder man had told her would protect her from the cold.

He wasn’t wrong.

At night, when she was out in the open on a branch of as tall a tree as she can climb, the jacket was probably one of the only things that kept her alive. She wore as thick of a pair of boots and gloves as she could get her hands on, traded for with fur and meat, and walked through the woods with a fur coat over her back that covered her pack from view.

She could call herself a “Grounder with a bad past” but one woman said, without even realizing what it meant to Clarke, that “being a wanderer makes you anything but a grounder.”

Being a wanderer meant she was close enough.

`````

Octavia’s entrance to Polis was anything but pleasant.

Osiris did as promised, and Octavia was able to find her way to the Capital with the help of a boy named Takoma. Together, they made the journey to Polis and until after they reached the main gates, they didn’t have one problem.

It wasn’t until they were passed the gates and someone recognized Octavia from under her hood that all hell broke loose.

Grounder guards surrounded them on their horses and dragged both Octavia and Takoma off of their animals. With the two in chains, the guards walked towards the center of the city, Takoma screaming innocence the whole way and Octavia willing his voice to stop.

She knew that her being recognized would mean a direct path to the Commander, and that was exactly what she needed.

What she didn’t need was the constant feel of a Grounder’s knife in her back.

“Chomouda yu don sis op Okteivia kom Skaikru gon honon?” (Why do you hold Octavia kom Skaikru prisoner?) was the first words that the Commander spoke when Octavia and Takoma were taken into the war room of the building in the center of the city.

Octavia looked up in relief at the words, knowing that Lexa had no intention of hurting her for being in the capital.

The Commander looked worlds younger than Octavia had last seen her.

There was no war paint adorning her face—that alone made her look younger—but what made her look so young was the clear calmness that war never brought to her. 

Lexa’s shoulders were relaxed, her hands were clear of scratches from fighting, her eyes were no longer dark with hate and worry.

The Commander looked free.

“Don hon emo,” (Found them) the guard behind Octavia stated.

“Unchain them, and free the boy.”

When released, Octavia found she had been subconsciously pulling at the chains around her wrists, and when she looked down to rub them when the chains were gone, she found more than one open wound.

“Octeivia,” the Commander stated as Takoma was led out of the door and most of the guards in the room left except for one, who she knew by the name of Ryder.

Octavia bowed slightly before the Commander, mumbling, “Heda.”

“What is it you are in Polis for.” Lexa walked off of the steps leading up to her throne to stand closer to Octavia. “I would think that after our last meeting at the Mountain, you would want nothing to do with me and my culture anymore.”

“I have not forgiven you, Heda, but it seems that Skaikru is having issues that only your help can solve.”

She can see a flicker of surprise shimmer in the Commander’s eyes and a smirk begin to play on her lips. “And what problems could the oh-so-powerful Sky People be going through that means they need my help?”

“Clarke is gone.”

The smirk disappears, and Octavia knows that this conversation turned from amused to serious.

“And where has Klark kom Skaikru gone?”

“That’s the thing,” Octavia begins. “We don’t know, and we don’t know how to find her. But there are too many things for us to be worrying about even with Clarke there, and now that she’s gone, our problems have only gotten worse.”

“And why do you need my help?”

“I need someone to help us track her. We need Clarke back, and we can’t do it on our own.”

Octavia can see the questions flashing through the Commander’s eyes, and waits in silence for her answer.

She expects it to be a no.

“Ok.”

Octavia almost falls to the ground in shock. “Wait what?”

Lexa’s small smile returns, but her eyes stay hardened. “I will help you. Is that not what you wanted in the first place?”

“No! I mean yes, Heda. Thank you.”

Lexa chuckles slightly, something that Octavia never would’ve thought to see in her when the war was happening.

“So when do we leave?” the Commander asks.

Octavia’s face scrunches in confusion. “We?”

“You asked for my help, so it’s time I repay Skaikru for my betrayal at the Mountain…personally.”

“Meaning?”

“I’ll be coming with you to find Clarke.”


	3. A Rush of Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: this chapter does have a small mention about cutting and self harm but it's maybe two sentences and doesn't go into detail about the actual process of it.
> 
> Clarke continues to wander the woods and Lexa joins Octavia, Lincoln, and her guards on the journey to find Clarke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sorry it's been so late since the last update, but school just started and I had practice multiple times a week and homework near the end of the summer. I'll try to pump out another chapter soon though and make sure not to abandon this story like my other one whOOPS

When Octavia wanders back into camp two days later, the last thing anyone expects to see is The Commander’s personal guard at each side of her.

Truthfully, they didn’t expect to see Octavia at all.

But the sight of Indra and Ryder is both frustrating and hopeful to most from Skaikru, especially Abby.

She greets them at the gates as Octavia jumps off of her horse with a cold, “Welcome back,” that chills even Indra. The four of them find Raven in her lab and Marcus wandering the halls, and all find themselves circled around a table in the Ark’s meeting room.

“Octavia, you shouldn’t have brought them within our walls,” Abby mumbles to the girl.

Octavia frowns and turns to Abby. “They are here to help, you know that. What the rest of Skaikru thinks means nothing until after we find Clarke.”

Indra smirks. “I thought you didn’t trust Wanheda?”

Octavia glares while Abby’s eyes snap up to meet the general.

“Wanheda?”

“Commander of Death,” Ryder interrupts.

Octavia turns once more to Abby. “Clarke’s created quite a name for herself among the grounders.”

“More than just a name,” Indra begins. “That girl has created an image. A lingering shadow amongst my people, and there is unrest beginning to build because of Klark kom Skaikru.”

Abby’s brows furrow. “Unrest? What could my daughter have done to create _unrest_ within an entire clan of people.”

Indra’s eyes are cold when she looks at Abby.

“One girl killed an entire mountain…Destroyed a shadow that my people have spent years hiding under. You can’t truly be that surprised.”

 

 

It takes all of seven words to get Abby an audience with Lexa.

“I need to speak to The Commander,” and suddenly she’s walking down the halls of the Ark following Octavia and Lexa’s guards.

“Abby,” The Commander mumbles upon her entrance into the girl’s tent about a mile outside of Arkadia.

“We need your help.”

Lexa glances at Octavia, standing close behind Abby. “So I’ve been told.”

“I assume you know the situation?”

Lexa stands from her throne. “You would assume correctly. I’ve gathered my fechas (hounds). They’ll help me locate Klark kom Skaikru.”

At this, Ryder quickly leaves the room.

Abby follows his exit with her eyes, but looks back at Lexa when he leaves her sight.

“Do you mind if I ask you a question, Commander?”

“I do not.”

“What makes you want to help us?”

Before Lexa can answer, the sounds of heavy feet and howling enter from outside the tent and three large hounds come bounding through the entrance.

Lexa’s gaze hardens at the sight of the dogs, and she belts out, “Hey!” and all three hounds stop in their tracks.

“Masta op!” (Come) she yells, and all three rush to reach her side. “Chil au.” (Calm down)

The largest of the dogs immediately lays on its side, while the other two, much smaller compared to the first, position themselves sitting on either side of Lexa.

When settled, Lexa looks once more at Abby and Octavia before her, smirking slightly at their confused and shocked expressions.

“As I told Octavia,” she starts. “I believe it’s time I repay Skaikru for what I’ve done.”

`````

“Hey Clarke.”

_Ignore it._

“Clarke, come on.”

_Don’t let him get to you._

“Clarke you can’t keep ignoring me.”

_Shut up._

“I’m serious, Clarke.”

_Shut up._

“Clarke.”

“Shut up!” she screams, reaching towards the knife at her hip and hurling it at the figure following closely behind her.

It passes right through his heart and lands with a _thud_ into the tree directly behind him.

She looks up at the sky, sucking in air as she stares at the full moon above her.

“You can’t keep doing this, Clarke,” he mumbles, stepping towards the _mighty_ Wanheda before him. “I’m here for a reason. You got rid of me once, twice, but don’t they say that third time’s a charm?”

“Why can’t you just leave me alone, Finn?”

“Because you destroyed three-hundred warriors. Because you slit a man’s throat. Because you stabbed me. Because you irradiated an entire mountain of people. Because you were destined to be haunted for the rest of your life by your actions, Clarke, and I’m the thing you chose to put all of your anger towards.”

The tears begin to flow down her face heavily, creating tracks in the dried blood upon her skin.

“I’m not angry with you.”

“No, but you’re angry with yourself, Clarke, and you feel more guilty about me than you _ever_ have anything else.”

“You loved me and I hurt you so much.”

“Which is why I’m here today. ‘Love is weakness,’ you told me that day you sent me away the second time, and yet you let yourself love Lexa. You trusted her and look where that brought you.”

He steps forward and his hand goes to grasp at her exposed throat. She gulps, and the tears begin to flow harder, and her knees buckle and she finds herself kneeling in mud and dirt and _death._

“You feel so much for so many, but Clarke, I think it’s time you stop feeling anything.”

Finn’s grip only tightens, but she doesn’t feel it.

`````

The journey starts quickly.

After talking, Abby and Octavia lead Indra and the dogs into Clarke’s old bedroom, ignoring the haunted looks of Skaikru people as they walk through the halls, and allows the dogs to smell anything and everything that Clarke had ever touched in that room.

When the dogs stop their huffing about the room, they turn to Indra, and Octavia leads them back out once more, and when Lexa calls, “Lok op,” (Find) the dogs howl and bark and circle until their commander gets on top of her horse.

“Hos of,” (Go quickly) the Commander yells when all who are coming are ready, and the dogs take off.

`````

Clarke hasn’t seen anything of Finn since the last full moon. Around three weeks and she doesn’t even hear his voice at the back of her head anymore. He seems to have just disappeared from all existence, much like he had the first time.

She doesn’t know if it’s a curse or a blessing.

Clarke finds herself more alone than she ever had before, but weekly visits to pick up meat from Niylah mean she isn’t alone for too long.

But she’s been gathering meat, and after today’s visit to the trading post, she’ll have enough to last her probably months in the wild.

She doesn’t know if that’s a curse or a blessing either.

It means she can survive on her own better than she ever could before, but it also means she’ll be on her own for much longer than would be safe for her sanity.

_But everyone is better off if I go on my own anyway._

So she shuffles into Niylah and her father’s trading post at sunset with this thought in mind, and mumbles a quick hello to the girl before Niylah rushes to the back to grab the meat.

“Steiks-de kom yu las fragon,” (The meat from your last kill) the girl mumbled, handing a wrap of meat to Clarke, a small smile on her face. “Thau osir.” (Minus our share)

“Mochof,” Clarke reaches for the meat and carefully places it into her pack, nervously glancing at the girl before her once she’s done.

The look on the girl’s face tells Clarke that she already knows.

“Mebi oso na hit coda op nodotaim?” (May we meet again?)

Clarke smiles faintly, reaching for Niylah’s hand much like she did the first time they met, then turns and walks away.

 

 

Life turns dim for her after that.

She can’t feel, but then again she can’t hear or see or think in general.

Wanheda wanders the woods for a month on her own, turns her back on everyone she meets along the way, kills just to kill. Wanheda collects furs into a small cave somewhere near the border of what she believes is Azgeda, if the scarred faces of passing soldiers she sees from above in the trees means anything.

Her war paint shifts from faded reds and whites to a deep red and black. The blood around her eyes travels in a slash across her face, and she fills in the space of her forehead and chin with charcoal from her fires.

_The death of a fire that marks my skin…_

She finds herself speaking little more than a word a day, that one words usually amounting to a curse in Gonasleng or—more often than she’d like—Trigedasleng.

She slices marks into the walls of her home with a dulled knife, marks a calendar for each day passed and doodles images among the hashmarks that tell of her kills.

The marks of her kills take almost a full day to carve into the wall—She marks the three-hundred grounders she killed, and the two before them. She marks Finn into the wall and the two-hundred and fifty from TonDC. She marks Dante Wallace among the other three-hundred and fifty from the mountain.

She almost marks herself into the wall, but thinks she doesn’t deserve to give herself the title of Death when she already commands it.

She attempts to mark some of them into her own flesh, but finds that even the skin of her thighs and calves could never be enough to fill every single kill mark she deserves.

And the risks for infection greatly outweigh her own need to feel retribution for her sins.

`````

At first, Octavia thinks that following a bunch of mutts around the forest is a waste of time, because despite her tracking and survival instincts having grown during her time on the ground, she still feels like the small group of people—herself, Lincoln, The Commander, and her guards—are traveling in endless circles.

It isn’t until they find a trading post run by a skinny but strong thing of a girl and her father.

The girl looks shocked when her very own commander comes in through the entrance to the building, and drops what she was doing quite literally onto the floor, shuffling to a knee and mumbling “Heda” as she does so.

“Gyon op,” (Rise) Lexa states, stern but also soft in a way Octavia wouldn’t expect to come from The Commander.

“Chit can ai do gon yu?” (What can I do for you) the girl stutters out.

“Yu sou don sin Klark kom Skaikru in?” (Have you seen Clarke from Skaikru?)

Octavia can see the sudden defensive look that appears in the girl’s eyes, and she knows that Clarke had been here.

“Chit Heda yu gaf Wanheda?” (What does The Commander want with Wanheda?) the girl asks, her head ticking up in what seems like arrogance.

Lexa’s neck quirks to the side.

“Chil yo daun. Remember who you’re talking to.” (Stand down)

The girl’s head points down in shame, and Octavia finds she can see the defeat in the girl’s eyes just from those few words.

“Moba, Heda.”

Lexa says nothing in response, but steps forward towards the girl’s counter.

“Your name?”

The girl looks forward at Lexa, but glances around her to stare at Octavia for a moment. Without looking away, the girl states, “Niylah.”

Lexa nods. “You’ve seen Wanheda? Correct?”

Niylah looks back at Lexa and nods.

“When did you last see her?”

The girl looks up as if trying to remember, then quickly pushes out, “A month ago.”

From where Octavia stands, she can see Lexa’s shoulders tense immensely, but her face does little more than twitch at the statement.

Octavia expects Lexa to speak, but Niylah continues.

“She was gathering meat. A lot of it.”

“Do you know where she went?” Lexa asks.

“No. She was already eager enough to spend her time alone. But with the amount of furs she had the last time I saw her, I suspect she went along Eden’s Path into Azgeda.”

At this, Octavia starts, “Why would she go into the Ice Nation?”

Niylah glances at her once more. “Like I said, she didn’t want to be around grounders. Most would never even know who she was but she got close enough that I saw her eyes once and she introduced herself as Klark to me.”

Octavia frowns, and is about to speak when Lexa does it for her.

“What do you mean most wouldn’t know who she was?”

The girl’s eyes look cold and hurt when they look at Lexa.

“Wanheda these days looks nothing like the sun-kissed girl who fell from the sky.”

`````

She refrains from cleaning the blood and ash from her skin more than she refrains from thinking of those that she’s killed.

It marks her as the true Commander of Death, and in the wild, the animals come more for her at the smell of rotting flesh and death than they would ever do even if she had no smell at all.

Her cave becomes infested with nonsense: piles of furs stack to make her bed, an excess amount of weapons along the floor of the cave, writings of nothing on the walls. Her own stench of pity and solitude lurks in the back of the cave where she sleeps, and the fire that billows throughout the night does little to smoke out the own rot that comes with insanity.

As much as she likes to avoid her problems, she finds herself wondering more and more what everyone around her is doing while she hides in a cave to deal with her own madness. She wonders what the men and women of Azgeda do in their free time, having heard so much about the ruthlessness of their very own Queen Nia. She wonders what her friends in Arkadia do now that she’s gone, and how much better their lives must be without the burden of Wanheda on their backs.

She even wonders what Lexa does now that she’s in the Capital and how she no longer has to worry about the Mountain or keeping a treaty with Skaikru and how she doesn't have to worry about _her._

`````

“Can I ask you a question, Heda?” Octavia asks as they continue to follow the route of the dogs along Eden’s Path.

“You just did,” Lexa responds with a small smile.

“Another question then.”

“You may.”

“What is the real reason that you came with us to find Clarke.”

The girl’s smile falls at the question, and she looks away from Octavia to follow the sight of the dogs in front of their horses.

“I’m not sure what you mean by that.”

“I just have a hard time believing that the only reason that you came here was to pay a debt to Skaikru or something. Make up for what you did. Because I know that I still don’t trust you or even enjoy you and neither does most of Skaikru and I don’t think even doing this would ever allow us to trust you.”

“You might be crossing a line right now, Octavia.”

“I don’t mean to but, I think even you know that what I’m saying is true and I don’t know why you would be doing this if nothing good will come of it.”

At this, the dogs in front of them begin to stray off of the path, and both of the girl’s attention is drawn away from their conversation when the hounds begin to howl.

“Mafya ai op!” (Follow me) Lexa calls behind her. “Don hon emo op!” (They found something)


	4. Insanity Bridged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke finds a friend and Lexa finds Clarke.

The dogs lead them to a small river and a fire pit that looks weeks old. Beside it is a carcass and a Skaikru jacket.

Clarke’s jacket.

Lexa can recognize it despite the bleeding sun before she even hits the ground from off her horse. She rushes to the jacket, glancing at the carcass and stains of blood on the rocks.

“Well we know she was here,” Octavia mumbles as she walks to Lexa, Lincoln close on her tail.

“We need to keep moving,” Lexa curses.

“Heda,” Lincoln starts, finding himself face to face with a glare from Lexa at the interruption. “We need to rest. It’ll be dark soon.”

“We need to find Clarke.”

Octavia can almost see the desperation in The Commander’s eyes.

_Now I see why she came with us._

“Heda, please.” Octavia almost wants to put a hand on the girl’s shoulder, but knows better than that. “We wouldn’t be able to find Clarke in the dark anyways.”

Lexa’s eyes flash. 

“I would.”

Indra, sensing the situation tensing before her speaks. “Heda you know better than I do that trying to find Wanheda at night is a death wish.”

Lexa glares back at her general, and Octavia thinks for a second that she might attempt to kill the woman, but the tension leaves the Commander’s body and her glare eases into nothing more than frustration.

“Fine. We rest now, but we leave before dawn.”

“Sha, Heda.”

`````

Clarke can feel someone watching her.

She can sense their eyes whenever she leaves her cave to go hunting or scavenging or anything that doesn’t have to do with sitting idle. She can feel their eyes when she wanders to the clearing near the cave, or by the stream, and she can feel their eyes when she lays in her bed at night.

She can’t seem to tell if it’s a real feeling or not.

For all she knows, she could be stalked by one of Azgeda, or even some animal waiting to strike her, but she could also just be going crazy.

_As if I wasn’t already._

She spends an hour or so one night thinking of what to do to find out if something is actually there, and decides on finding if it’s an animal first. So Clarke leaves a chunk of meat at the entrance of the cave, knowing it might be a death wish but feeling overly confident with her title as Wanheda.

She lies in her bed that night, watching as the light of her fire flickers against the meat. When she accidentally falls asleep near dawn, she wakes to find the meat gone.

`````

Their journey the next day moves slower than Lexa would like.

The dogs can’t seem to find much out in the freezing air of the northern clan, and Lexa feels more and more cautious as they search the territory surrounding Azgeda. She knows how reckless it is to be out here, but she knows that she needs to find Clarke.

_Before Nia does…_

The air around her is thick, and everyone can see it, and she knows she should keep more of her emotions in check, but she also knows she needs to protect Clarke.

“Heda?”

She’s pulled from her thoughts to find Octavia sidling up to her on her horse.

“Yes.”

The girl looks nervous for a moment.

“You never answered my question…”

Lexa has to think for a moment, and suddenly remembers, but really would rather avoid the conversation.

“I’m not sure I remember what you’re talking about.”

“The real reason why you wanted to come find Clarke personally.”

_Persistent…_

She finds herself speaking before she can even censor her thoughts.

“I already lost her to my own choices once, I can’t lose her to death as well.”

`````

She tries to repeat the process multiple times after the first, but each time she manages to stay awake all night, the meat remains in its place, and every time she falls asleep the meat is gone by the time she wakes up.

The eyes remain on her as she works though, and it almost seems to her as if they grow in intensity. They never feel malicious in her mind, but do in fact feel quite curious.

Curious about her existence possibly.

As annoying as the eyes may be sometimes though, she finds they’re a good distraction from the ghosts of her past. So eventually she gives up on trying to catch whatever it is that watches her, and instead makes it a—probably risky—habit to leave a bit of fresh meat outside the entrance to her cave each night.

In her mind, she’s too far gone already, so what’s the harm in having a little risk while in the middle of no where.

`````

She can feel the eyes of Indra and Ryder on her when she says the words, and she knows she’s crossed a line that no commander had ever crossed once, let alone twice like her.

They know she cares for Clarke, and she probably cares too much.

Indra worries for Lexa, because she saw first hand what the death of Costia did as a result of the Ice Nation, and now that they know Clarke is somewhere near Azgeda, she fears Lexa could become more desperate than what’s safe or necessary to find the girl.

“Heda…” she mutters close to the young leader.

“Shof op, Indra…Ai get em in,” (Shut up, Indra…I know) Lexa responds, her head lowering in probably the closest thing Octavia may ever see to shame.

`````

_Maybe it’s just messing with me._

Clarke shuffles to the front of the cave, tossing a slice of fresh meat onto the slab of stone simply titled The Feeding Rock.

_Or trying to waste my food…_

She knows it’s her own fault for the second thought though. She, after all, never needed to feed some random animal or human in the middle of the woods while she headed further towards total madness, yet she still puts that meat on that stone each night.

However, Clarke thinks maybe one day she can tame whatever even is out there.

Or maybe at least see it before she either dies or somehow makes it back to Arkadia.

Though truthfully, she doesn’t quite think that anything will ever happen with her and The Eyes until one night, she’s watching the entrance of the cave to pass the time when something crawls out from the darkness and makes its way over to The Feeding Rock.

It looks something like a cat, but not nearly as large as the panthers that she has killed for meat before. It’s shoulders look hunched, and from her spot, Clarke can see a slight limp in it’s walk.

_Easy kill._

The thing begins to eat the meat laid out by Clarke and slowly, as quietly as possible, she reaches to her right where her hunting knife lays and removes it from its sheath. At the glint of light that must be flickering off of the blade, the animal glances at her, and when she makes contact with the bright eyes, harshly visible in the fire’s glow, she freezes.

It stares past the fire at her and then suddenly begins to move towards her, stepping around the fire. She clenches her hand tighter around the handle of her knife and brings it up in front of her. The animal halts only a few yards away from Clarke at the sight of the knife, but never breaks eye contact with her.

From this distance and with the new light, she can see that the animal is in fact a cat of sorts, and seems to resemble very closely what her Earth History books called a Lynx. Its entire coat is a mix of light and dark browns and greys with scattered spots and patches and a white chest. Its ears extend up into black furry points. When closer, she can see that, unlike most Lynx from the books, its eyes are a light, faded green.

They’re expressive and emotional.

_They’re like Lexa’s…_

She notices the caked blood all over the animal’s front paw and up towards its shoulder. To her, it seems like the animal should have died already with that kind of an injury, but also realizes the extra meat she’s been giving each night more than likely helps the big cat survive.

_We’re all just surviving, huh?_

The cat suddenly moves to lay down on the hard ground in front of her, and she finds whatever fear that might have faded returning, creating that familiar tightness in her chest.

The cat stays there until dawn and watches Clarke, just as Clarke watches it.

`````

To Lexa, it seems like time passes slower and slower the farther into Azgeda she travels. The harsh winds at night and bitter cold during the day make each hour feel like days, and each day like months. 

It frustrates her to no end because when all she wants to do is find Clarke, the dogs continuously follow a winding trail that leads closer to Azgeda and their possible deaths, but never to Clarke, and the slow moving time makes the journey seem endless.

For a full day, they travel slowly through the woods surrounding Azgeda, cautiously avoiding anything close to Azgeda trails, training grounds, or outside villages.

She, much like everyone had a long time ago, begins to lose a little of the hope she had had before, and fears that they might not be able to find Clarke. Lexa almost wants to congratulate the girl on picking the hardest place to track someone as her hiding spot.

It isn’t until they stop to feed the horses that the dogs find something, the largest of them rearing her head back and howling before taking off. Lexa doesn’t even think about the others as she kicks off the ground, sprinting to follow the dogs. She faintly hears the sound of rushing footsteps behind her, but she moves so quickly through the trees and brush that she barely focuses on anything but the tails of her hounds in the distance.

They don’t stop for what feels like forever, until Lexa bursts through the trees with the hounds and into a clearing gleaming with the light of the fading sun.

The entire area is filled with tall grass, but not so tall that you it reached anywhere past your knee. The grass was bright green, fresh and alive despite what seemed to be death around it. The trees at the edge of the clearing seem rotted and decayed, many without branches and some even toppled over onto their sides.

Lexa can’t seem to find any specific reason for there to be so much death. There are no signs of rot or bugs or anything that could lead the trees to fall and die, and yet…

“Wanheda don hon hou op,” (Wanheda found a home) Indra mutters when she and Octavia rush after Lexa into the clearing.

Lexa’s eyes burn for a second and she looks out into the space around her.

“Shof op, Indra.”

`````

In the time that she waits for dawn to break, she tries to think of something to call the animal in front of her besides “beast” or “cat” or “thing.” It seems almost as if it is waiting for her to fall asleep, so she tries to think of names that might be similar to “killer” or “hunter” in the various other names from different languages that she had learned about in school. However, the cat never seems to look at her with malicious intent, but mostly as curious and wondering, and she finds herself focusing more and more on the eyes that watch her and have been watching her for weeks.

So her focus of names shifts from “Herne” and “Ansgar,” meaning something like warrior and hunter, to “Asfah” and “Ihsan,” names meaning expressive or emotional. Whenever she thinks of a new name, she mumbles the word out to the cat in front of her, watching its response. It lays with its head on its paws, much like Clarke had seen domesticated dogs do in pictures from before the war, and at each name that Clarke mutters, it flicks its ears in irritation.

It isn’t until she nearly whispers the name “Kou” that she gets any sort of positive response from the cat. Its ears flick like before, but it lifts its head off of its paws and looks at Clarke curiously.

She repeats the name.

“Kou.” The cat rises to its feet and sits in front of her, watching with more focus than before.

She almost laughs.

“In a world like this, and you pick the name that means peace?”

 

By the time the sun comes, Kou seems to lose interest in her, and when she thought the cat had finally calmed enough to sleep, the animal was up and sprinting across the cave, grabbing whatever meat had been left on The Feeding Rock and disappearing into the woods.

 

During that day, she finds her lack of sleep getting to her more than it normally would, and she fumbles a lot throughout her normal routine. She fumbles when trying to shoot down a squirrel from a tree, and she slips in the water at the stream, effectively soaking her pants. She trips on the way back up to her cave and cuts a nasty gash into her arm, one she worries may actually get infected if she can’t find something clean to wrap it in.

She returns to her make shift home with a wasted day resting on her back.

That night, when sitting in nothing but her undergarments and a shirt with many of her furs wrapped around her body, she has nothing to feed Kou, and quietly chews on a piece of jerky in guilt.

Truthfully, she doesn’t expect Kou to come to her when she’s awake like before, and so is genuinely surprised when the big cat returns earlier than the night before, rushing into the cave, a light layer of snow on its back.

She curses, knowing it’ll be even harder to catch meat the next day if there is snow.

Her attention shifts, however, when the cat rushes to where it had sat the night before, silently dropping to lay down in front of her, watching her once more.

She scoffs, “You’re a weird thing.”

Kou’s ears twitch in response.

“What the hell are you anyway,” she croaks, not having used her voice this much in the last month than she had in the last day. “I feel weird calling you ‘it’ in my head.”

Kou does nothing more than shift in place.

“I’m an idiot,” she mutters.

Clarke lays on her side among her furs, her left leg becoming exposed to the cold air in the back of the cave. She shudders and quickly pulls her leg back in under the furs. Kou watches the movement curiously, shifting once more in place to settle right between Clarke and the fire, effectively blocking any heat from reaching her.

She groans, “God, come on, I need that heat. I’m not like you.”

Clarke quickly reaches out to the small pile of a few extra furs next to her, pulling one to cover her legs and then another to wrap with the others around her shoulders. Kou watches once more, sitting in place as she covers herself, and then suddenly she can almost see a sense of understanding come over the cat, and it shifts its paws to the left then allows the whole rest of its body to follow.

She sighs as the heat suddenly returns to her body, pushing out a “mochof” on instinct to the cat.

`````

Abandoning any instincts that the hounds have of chasing after the trail that they smell, Lexa and the others make camp in the clearing, Lincoln and Ryder joining them much later with the horses. To them, it is obvious that Clarke had spent a significant amount of time in the clearing, and those like Indra and Octavia had silently hoped that Clarke would just return to the clearing in the morning and they wouldn’t have to go chasing after her any farther into Azgeda territory.

On that night, Octavia sits quietly next to Lincoln as they all munch on dried meat and broth from pine.

“You’ve been quiet this whole time,” she mutters to him, biting a corner off of the meat.

He looks at her without moving his body, then looks forward once more. “I find it better to mind my tongue around Heda when she is as stressed as she is, being on bad terms with her already.”

Looking to Lexa, she can see what he means.

She sits slightly out of place from everyone, choosing the log that Ryder had dragged over that sat farthest from everyone else. Her shoulders are tense as she sits on the hunk of rotted tree. She frowns as she watches the fire, mindlessly taking small bites out of her share of meat. Her knee bounces up and down in its place and her free hand clenches and unclenches, resting on her unmoving knee.

Octavia can see the thoughts racing a mile a minute through her head from all the way across their small circle.

 

When morning comes, Lexa is the first to wake up, already stoking the fire and feeding the dogs and horses before they leave. Octavia is next to wake, but chooses to lay next to Lincoln longer to avoid conversation with the uptight commander. It isn’t until she hears the sound of Indra’s voice muttering “monin, Heda” (ROUGHLY: good morning, Heda) that she chooses to detach herself from Lincoln, smiling slightly at his light groans from being woken up.

The terrain the dogs intend to travel when give orders proves to be too rough and woodsy for them to travel on their horses, so Lexa orders Ryder and Lincoln to stay behind and watch the horses and smoothly walks into the woods where the dogs had began their path. Indra and Octavia quickly follow behind.

They walk for barely fifteen minutes before the largest of the dogs lets out a harsh bark and begins to howl, causing the other two to howl as well, and Lexa knows they’ve found something.

They’ve found Clarke.

`````

She finds she’s made the mistake of falling asleep when she suddenly arises in the morning to light bleeding in from the outside, a burnt out fire, and no Kou in sight.

After dressing in her now dry and still slightly warm pants and preparing for the day, she walks outside to find a light but still annoying layer of snow on the floor of the woods. She ground squishes as she walks through the snowy trees towards the river. Clarke finds the water there to be freezing cold but not enough to actually turn to ice and sighs hopefully, knowing this means that she still has fresh water to drink until winter gets too harsh. Filling the couple of pouches she has and an old metal water bottle from the Ark, Clarke slowly but swiftly moves back through the woods towards her cave. 

She contemplates visiting the clearing sometime today, but finds that the bitter cold caused from the night of snow makes her head ache, and decides the day might be spent better near her cave, near a source of heat. She knows she won’t find much meat today anyways.

Following the path worn out by her own feet after a month of wandering, Clarke makes her trek up the slight hill just outside of her camp when she suddenly hears the unmistakeable sound of dogs in the distance. Their faint howling travels to her and she feels a sense of dread spike through her entire body.

Rushing to shove the pouches and bottle into her pack, she scans the surrounding area for anything more substantial than just a hunting knife to possibly fight off what sounds like multiple dogs, knowing that she has no time to run from them. Finding a weakened branch near her, she breaks the spike off and rushes to grip it tightly into her left hand, already pulling out her hunting knife from its sheath at her side. 

She stands behind a tree, slightly hidden from the immediate view from atop the hill she had been previously attempting to climb, and waits for the dogs to come.

`````

Rushing to follow the excited dogs, Lexa begins to sprint down the slope of land in front of her, quickly leaving Octavia and Indra slightly behind her. She follows the dogs as they weave in and out of trees, and puts in her best effort to keep up with them.

She nearly trips over a loose branch sticking just ever so slightly out of the ground, failing to pay much more attention to anything but the dogs. She does, however, recognize the tell-tale sound of her sword unlatching from her waist and dropping to the ground, but finds herself too distracted to do much more than acknowledge the loss of her only weapon.

Lexa leaves Octavia and Indra in the dust when she drops the sword, and in the time it takes for Octavia to reach down quickly, grabbing the sword into her hands, Lexa is no where to be seen and Indra is yelling.

“Bants! Nau! Me gaf gonot in!” (Go! Now! We need to leave!)

`````

The dogs reach her faster than she thought, and when they do, they go nearly barreling past her.

She thinks they might have missed her when the head dog suddenly turns its head, sliding quickly and quite roughly to a stop closer to her than she could ever be comfortable with.

At the sight of her, the two smallest dogs begin to growl, stopping with the biggest dog and edging towards her. She holds the stick in a defensive barrier in front of her, dodging the smallest dog as it jumps along the side of her, effectively creating a wall around her.

She lets out a yell, bursting from her chest in as loud and as threatening a way as the girl can manage, and all three dogs stop for a split second, shocked by her outburst. 

At the sound, movement to her left drags her attention momentarily from the dogs, and a dark blur goes rushing past her, and suddenly she can hear growling other than the three dogs around her. To her right, Kou stands, the hair on its back standing on edge and its tail puffed out and twitching.

She can see the extra pressure it puts on its injured paw to seem more threatening and physically stronger than she knows it is at the moment. Turning away from Kou, she looks at the dogs who, instead of glaring at her like they had before, instead turn their attention on to the cat defending her. They growl and bark at Kou, closing in the circle around it.

_Fuck no._

She nearly trips forward as she pushes her knife and stick out in front of her, rushing to Kou’s side to help defend from the dogs, and then suddenly she hears it.

A faint “hod up” from somewhere in the trees, the sound of a person crashing through leaves and branches, and the dogs stop altogether, and then suddenly Lexa is jumping over a branch and into Clarke’s view, and Clarke swears she doesn’t look any different than the last time she saw her.

At the sight of her, Lexa stalls, sliding and digging her feet into the mud of the hill.

_This girl…this is not her._

Before her is an animal, two animals to be exact. The human in front of her is caked in blood, save for a few of what look to be tear tracks running down the red and black paint across her face. Her clothes are torn and it’s clear that a gash had been marked into the girl’s arm quite recently. 

Beside her, the wild cat so rarely seen in Trikru lands stands at the girl’s side, growling at her hounds that still surround them. His paw—“he” because she can tell from size and markings—much like the girl next to him, is covered in old blood, and even she can see the faint strain on the big cat’s arm that means it still isn’t quite healed yet.

She glances up at the bright blue eyes, so contrastingly dark compared to the bright red of her face, and she fears what may have happened to the Clarke from before, and as Octavia and Indra suddenly appear behind her, she has few words to say.

So she just mumbles to herself.

“Jok.” (Fuck.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys so I'm not 100% sure what your guys' take on this chapter will be. Hopefully positive but I know some people don't like stereotypical things but I'm actually a sucker for cliche stuff like the stuff in this chapter. So anyways, hopefully you liked it leave a comment and let me know how I'm doing thanks!!


	5. A Hero's Journey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short Chapter:  
> They find Clarke but she's not who they think she is and in the short time that they actually see her, they don't get any answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long and sorry this is such a short chapter. You have no idea how hard it is to write with my schedule recently.

Clarke thinks she kind of remembers learning about something called the monomyth, the Hero’s Journey. Every hero of every myth or story follows a similar journey. 

The hero is somehow an outcast, different from the others.

The hero finds some reason to leave and save something.

Either hero or friend of hero feels cautious about the task.

Mentor teaches everything the hero needs to know.

Hero has to pass tests or obstacles, faces life or death or their greatest fear, then reaches the major challenge.

Beats the major challenge then goes back home, but before that has to face one final challenge that serves as the climax to the hero’s story.

Hero comes back bearing something of importance.

End of the hero’s journey.

She used to think it was useless, a pointless story because “How could anyone on the Ark be any sort of hero?” She knows now she was wrong, especially after all she had been through.

She had seen the monomyth herself. A repeating pattern of what some would call a hero.

She knows that the monomyth, in any sort of chronicle, poses a greater and greater threat with each story. Each problem in the world exposes a larger sacrifice if everything fails. First your friends, then your community, then the world. It was always like that. 

Kill the three-hundred grounder warriors to save her friends.

Stab Finn to save the Ark.

Irradiate the mountain to save her friends, the Ark, and even the grounders.

But this journey that she went on was an entirely different hero’s journey. She went on her own, not for her friends, her community, or for the world.

Clarke left for herself, because the problem that was being faced at the time threatened something that, in her mind, was more important than anything, her Self.

So that’s why, when Lexa stands in front of her, the relief evident on her face, Clarke wants to kill her.

Because she started this.

Because Lexa and her betrayal was Clarke’s threat.

Because Lexa is far too early and Clarke is far too gone.

So when Lexa breathes out “jok” (Fuck), Clarke adjusts the grip on her knife and lunges forward up the hill towards the Commander.

Before she can make it a pair of jaws latches onto her left arm, her fighting arm, her hunting arm. The pain rushes through her as she faintly hears a shrill roar, a voice screams out, and the jaws release themselves from around her forearm.

She falls to her knee, the knife escaping her grasp, and clutches at her arm.

Looking up and to the right, she can see Kou blocking her from one of the dogs, the one that most likely latched itself onto her arm. Kou’s back is tense and she can hear the slow rumbling of a growl coming from deep in his chest. 

Frustrated, she lets out what could only be considered a feral scream, one that causes all around her to stop. Kou flinches visibly, and the dogs seem to shrink back, curious but cautious at the same time. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Octavia and Indra step back, but the look on Lexa’s face makes her even more frustrated than before.

Lexa looks calm, sad, upset. She looks conflicted in her emotions, her hand resting on her hip where her sword would normally be, as if subconsciously looking for something to protect herself.

_Protect her from me…_

She watches the girl before her step forward, but before she can take more than a step, Clarke reaches down with her right hand, grasps a small knife in her boot, and hurls it at the Commander’s foot. It lands with a soft thud into the mud around two inches off of its mark. 

Indra reaches to her hip to pull out her sword, and quickly, Clarke reaches to the ground with her left arm—ignoring the fact that she can barely clench a fist, nevertheless fight—to grab the knife at her feet. Shuffling to a defensive position, she prepares to defend herself against the general beginning to lunge at her with her sword in hand.

She sees both Lexa and Octavia’s mouths move, but she zones them out as she focuses on the blade coming towards her. Without thinking much, she scrapes her blade along Indra’s coming towards her and spins away from her, bumping hips slightly with Kou, who moves to step in between her and Indra, but slightly off center to still defend her from the dogs now at her left.

Lexa belts out “hod op!” (Stop) and steps down the hill slightly, then seems to rethink her movements as Clarke directs a forceful glare in her direction.

Clarke almost thinks how she never thought she’d have so much control over the Commander.

“Hakom yu kamp raun hir?” (Why are you here?) Clarke growls, glaring at Lexa but keeping watch on Indra in her peripheral view. 

Lexa is shocked at her use of Trigedasleng.

Octavia is the first to speak.

“Clarke,” she steps up next to Lexa. “What happened?”

“Chit kom au?” (What happened?) she almost laughs. “Em gaf op the Maun.” (Go see the Mountain)

_Why am I speaking in Trig again?_

“That wasn’t your fault, Clarke.” Octavia glances at Lexa when she says it.

“Sef don Tondisi?” (But TonDC was?)

“You had a choice then, but you let all those people die.”

_I knew you still hated me for that._

She says nothing in return, suddenly unable to see past the clouds crossing her vision, and she nearly falls to her knee, barely managing to grasp onto an overhanging tree near her. The knife in her hand goes falling to the ground and she can suddenly feel the pulse in her arm and the pain accompanying it. Looking at the ground, she can see the pool of red at the ground near her feet growing with each second.

“We need to stop the bleeding or else the journey here will have been for nothing.”

Lexa is the one to speak, and the first to reach her, grasping at her hips to hold her up.

_No._

She pushes the Commander away and finally loses her balance, falling into the mud of the forest.

“Clarke, stop,” Lexa pushes through her clearly clenched teeth, reaching out once more to help her.

But she won’t take it.

She looks up at the Commander with a fire in her eyes that the other girl has never seen before, and snarls out, “Step of o ai na frag yu op.” (Get off or I’ll kill you)

Lexa backs off, her nostrils flaring but understanding the truth behind that statement. She knows that if Clarke were to attack her again, Indra would surely kill her, or she would have to kill her herself for threatening the life of the Commander. So she steps back a few feet from the girl on the ground.

“You need help, Clarke,” she mumbles.

The girl in the mud reaches out with her bloody right hand and pushes off of the ground, painfully getting to her feet. Grasping her arm once more, she looks at Lexa with intensity in her eyes.

“I don’t need help from anyone.”

It’s the first time she’s spoken in English since the group first started passing words, and for some reason the words strike everyone around her in a way that none of her words had before. 

Lexa can feel it crawl up her back and bang around in her head like a pinball. 

Octavia feels a sense of guilt wash over her despite her previous dislike for the girl. 

Indra wants to kill her.

“Yu biyo no Heda?” (You deny the Commander?) the general questions.

“Shof op, Indra.” Lexa counters, clearly frustrated.

“Heda please, she is breaking our laws.”

“Em nau laik kwelen.” (She is weak right now)

“I am nothing.” Clarke’s words resonate against the trees around them, and she suddenly pushes off with her feet, rushing into the trees. 

Kou follows on three paws.

“Bak op!” (Go back!) Lexa yells, and each of the hounds go bursting towards the direction they first came, and Lexa goes to follow Clarke further into the forest.

Indra and Octavia quickly follow.

Clarke, without so much as glancing back at them even if she knew they were there, leads them through the forest. At on point, her pace begins to pick up, and Lexa has to rush to keep her in her line of sight.

When the trees start to spread thin, the cat at Clarke’s side goes splitting into the forest, Clarke doesn’t even bat an eye, and instead goes leaping down a small drop. 

Lexa goes rushing to where the girl first dropped, and fears she may have just lost her when she sees slight movement in the trees ahead. Quickly, she drops to the ground and continues following Clarke.

Clarke takes them to a cave, and by the looks of the fire pit, furs set around, and intense amount of scratching into the wall, it is Clarke’s home.

_As close to it as she can get, I suppose._

When Clarke walks to the back of the cave where a bed of furs lays and sets down her things, Lexa stands at the entrance, waiting as Indra and Octavia finally catch up to them. 

“Why did you think this was a good idea?” Clarke’s voice cracks as she says the words.

“I can ask you the same, Clarke,” Octavia shoots back, stepping past Lexa to go into the cave.

Lexa watches as Clarke glances down at the girl’s feet and she walks forwards, and sees the quick movement to the knife at her hip with her injured left hand.

“Octavia,” she commands. “Back up.”

And the girl does so when she notices the knife in Clarke’s hand, stepping back to stand slightly in front of Lexa.

“Yu kamp raun.” (Stay there) Clarke visibly cringes when she prods at her weak hand. “Sef bilaik yu swis gaf in yun meika.” (Unless you want a knife through your hand)


	6. A Brittle Restart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lexa is more shocked by the girl they find in the woods than she ever could have expected. She thought they would find a frail thing of a girl, shell shocked and broken and angry...scratch that. That's exactly what they found. What she didn't expect was the rest of it.  
> Basically, Clarke and Lexa figure themselves out and Skaikru falls deeper into nonsense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly I can't even begin to explain how much guilt I feel not updating this story since O C T O B E R. However, it was a rough transition from finals and then into second semester and I literally had no inspiration for this story. I knew very little of where this was going at the beginning, but I think after writing this chapter I might have some ideas figured out.
> 
> Anyways, please enjoy. Expect updates much more often given that I'm on summer vacation right now.
> 
> P.S. Where's my doctor mechanic friends over there?

Clarke’s blood drips onto the hard floor of the cave, and Lexa finds her gaze wandering to the shivering arm of the girl. The flesh is mangled, no doubt meant to leave a disgusting scar across the girl’s forearm, and Lexa can’t help but feel immense guilt over what her hounds did. 

Yet, she is able to move her thoughts from those feelings, rushing instead to a place of worry over the ever growing puddle of blood by Clarke’s foot.

“Clarke,” she mumbles.

“I got it,” she cuts off quickly.

And she does, apparently, as she quickly moves away from her bloody mess to disappear into the back of the cave. She returns with a canteen, some cloth, and a smooth knife.

Octavia, who has since sat cross legged at the edge of the cave, eyes Clarke warily, and quietly asks if she needs any help.

Clarke doesn't speak, but shakes her head in response, already relighting the fire with a skill Lexa would never expect from someone practically newborn on the ground. Yet, the fire blazes in less than two minutes, and Clarke holds the knife to the hungry red blaze of the flame.

Lexa almost cringes in realization of what Clarke needs to do to her wound. She herself had needed to seal wounds quite a few times, but still she screamed at the touch of a red hot knife against her skin, and could only imagine what it might feel like for Clarke, neither battle hardened nor experienced with harsh wounds.

However, she handles the wound with the barest of touch, and the knife with even less. She pulls the blade from the fire with a smooth tug and presses the blade to her skin with a searing hiss.

She screams in agony, and even Indra looks away from the scene.

But the bleeding is stopped, the wound washed clean and bandaged with cloth, and Clarke breathes with relief.

When finished, she undresses without warning, and Lexa can see the three long scars of a cat attack, and she wonders faintly if it was the lynx from earlier. 

Shuffling over to her bed and falling onto it like a lifeline, Clarke mumbles, “There’s meat to your right. Do whatever you want with it.”

They eat in silence.

When the big cat shows up again, it’s already dark and Clarke has been poking around at the fire for hours now. 

Clarke’s face lights up at the sight of him, then falls, and she quietly mutters, “I don’t have anything for you,” but nevertheless the cat curls into a spot next to Clarke near the fire and watches the others warily, protecting her despite the obvious injury to his paw.

When the big cat shows up again, Lexa realizes how much she’s missed.

Clarke brushes her hands across his fur lightly, pulling her mass of furs tighter around her mostly naked body. She reaches out slowly, so as not to startle the cat, and reaches for his paw. He flinches when she gets near and she quickly speaks to him. 

“Shh, shh…I want to help. It’s ok.”

The next time she reaches for him, he doesn’t move, and Lexa finds the interaction astonishing. Clarke, rising to grab supplies to clean the cat’s paw, draws the attention of the other two in the room with Lexa, and when Clarke plops back into her spot among her furs, all three outsiders watch with awe as she tends to a wild and injured animal.

“The Commander of Death tries to save the world.”

It’s Indra who speaks, watching warily from the entry way of the cave.

“Indra…” she scolds.

Lexa can see Clarke’s eyes flash in anger before she goes back to working at the cat’s paw.

“I’m trying to make up for what I’ve done,” she mumbles, and Lexa’s heart aches.

Indra’s back moves with laughter. “By saving a doomed _bis?_ ” (Animal)

At this, Clarke stops moving, lightly placing the cat’s paw down onto the ground after washing it clean and pulling any dirt from it.

She looks directly at Lexa when she speaks.

“Might as well start somewhere.”

`````

“Any news from Octavia?” 

Raven busts into Abby’s office as if she lives there, striding over to her desk with as much grace as possible given her leg. Abby sighs, head in her hands, at the young girl’s intrusion. 

“Raven, don’t you have work to do?”

“Probably,” she smiles at the stressed woman. “But I find that when you’re in a rut, the best thing is a good laugh, and everyone knows I’m such a joke.”

Abby scolds herself for the slight smile that graces her lips, and Raven busts out a “gotcha!” at the sight of the grin.

It’s gone the second she opens her mouth.

Raven frowns, quirking her lips in frustration. 

“Right,” she sighs. “You don’t know how to have some fun.”

“Mind who you’re talking to, Raven.” Abby returns to reading at her desk.

“Oh I’m sorry, Miss All-Powerful Chancellor.” She leans heavily against the corner of Abby’s desk, gaining the attention of the woman once more. “Clearly you aren’t allowed a break with your favorite mechanic.”

“You’re one of the only mechanics,” Abby deadpans.

Raven glares, but smiles anyways when she states, “Harsh.”

“Raven, I know you love to make fun when you should be working, but I’ve got too much to deal with right now.”

An exhausted look comes over the mechanics face, and she mumbles, “Pike up your ass again?”

“Not literally, thank God, but he plans on running for Chancellor yet again.”

“Doesn’t he know that no one likes him?” Her fingers rap against the desk and she watches them earnestly. 

“Raven,” she mutters, and the girl looks up from her hand. “I think the problem is that suddenly people _do_ like him.”

`````

They spend the night in Clarke’s cave. 

Indra belts out a pattern from a horn in her pack, and another sounds in response, and Clarke assumes there must be others. Yet, despite the call from the horn, no one else ever shows up and by the time night has long settled, she feels the chill of a snowy night down her spine.

She watches the figures at the entry way of the cave, and at the sight of their shivering bodies, feels slightly torn.

“I lied,” she grumbles, looking back at the fire in front of her and Kou. At their questioning looks, she clarifies, “You’ll freeze to death of you stay by the entrance, so I lied about staying where you are.”

Octavia almost jumps at the hidden invitation, rushing to sit on the opposite end of the fire as Clarke, immediately holding her hands out to the warmth offered to her. Lexa and Indra are slightly more apprehensive, but when Lexa goes to stand, Indra quickly follows.

It isn’t until both women are only a foot away from the fire that Kou begins to growl. Upon closer examination, Clarke finds his eyes glare daggers straight through to flames to Lexa, and a chuckle escapes her chest without her permission.

Calmly despite the sudden influx of questioning eyes pointed at her, Clarke reaches out to Kou, softly touching his back.

“Shhh, Kou…” she sighs, closing her eyes.

The rumbling of his chest slows, and then stops all together, and Indra and Lexa sit down.

 

When Lexa finds she can’t sit still any longer, she intrudes, quietly asking, “How long have you been out here, Clarke?”

Clarke doesn’t even glance up when she responds. “This cave? Or on my own?”

“The cave,” Indra answers for her.

Clarke shuffles closer to the lynx, leaning down to no doubt suck the heat off of his body.

“Check the walls,” she mumbles, face almost in the animal’s fur.

Lexa glances, trying to count the dashes on the wall, but latches onto one of the prominent drawings carved into the wall. 

The door of the Mountain sits as the largest object, its door wide open and bearing flames that come pouring from inside. The waves of fire seem to wrap around the trees on either side of the door, and Lexa can clearly see the shadows of human figures within the flame. Standing in front of the barrel of chaos is a lone girl, whom Lexa can only assume is Clarke. She stands bearing the weight of a thousand deaths on her shoulders, and Lexa can see it through the drawing. Yet, Clarke is unscathed despite the madness surrounding her, all accept for a dark shadow painted in with charcoal that seems to curl around her figure.

The flames are painted in blood.

Lexa is broken out of her reverie when Indra’s harsh voice breaks through.

“-ou wear the marks of Azgeda?”

Clarke glances up, her blue eyes shining bright through the haze of black and red and white across her face. She glances back down, her face hidden but a horrible shudder visible in her back.

“I wear the marks of myself.”

Lexa can hear the grinding of Indra’s teeth, and knows her thoughts before she says it:

“ _Heda_ please. Our time with this pitiful thing of a girl is wasteful. You have greater concerns.”

“Say it to my face, why don’t you?” Clarke mumbles, and Octavia snorts, alerting her presence for the first time in hours.

Yet, Lexa can’t move past Indra’s words.

_Do I have greater problems to consider? My people are safe. I am safe so long as I leave this wretched place tomorrow. What else must I be concerned about besides Clarke?_

“Indra, I will not have this conversation.” Her jaw tenses, and she can feel the beginnings of a fight on her back.

Clarke watches on, intrigued but also concerned. She finds Kou must sense the tension, as his head lifts and a low rumble begins to flourish from his chest.

“You must know I am right! _Du nou laik osir kru! Chomouda yu Heda kigon shil op Skaikru!_ ” (She is not one of us! Why does Heda continue to help Skaikru!)

Lexa finds her lungs burning, vision closing in black around the edges. 

She is furious.

“ _Prom op ai sadon nodotaim an ai slash yu swela au klin!_ ” she roars, pain and anger and suffering lacing each word as it leaves her mouth (Question my decisions again and I will slit your throat out!) 

Her general backs down quickly, and she can vaguely see from the corner of her eyes the petrified glance of both Octavia and Clarke, and the piercing green eyes of the cat.

“Heda, please…” Indra whispers.

“Jok of, Indra.”

And then she’s gone.

`````

As quickly as Lexa leaves, Clarke rises from her spot among the furs, reaching for the shirt that had previously been tossed onto the floor. She throws the shirt over her body, rushing to put on her boots, and pulls her cloak over her body.

Indra, having picked up on her intentions, stares at the fire and mutters, “She’ll kill you if you go after her when she’s like this.”

Clarke pulls a knife into her belt, but stops when grabbing her gun, hesitating at Indra’s words. Yet, she doesn’t stop long, and turns to Indra in stoic silence.

“If she kills me, then it is one less thing for everyone to worry about.”

And without another word, she checks the magazine of the gun for the single bullet she knows is left, tucks the weapon against her thigh, and rushes out the entrance of the cave.

Kou, having startled at Clarke’s movement from the beginning, follows her out the door, and both occupants left in the cave watch as the two split off into the dark, snowy night.

`````

Lexa doesn’t go far.

In fact, she barely weaves between the trees before stumbling upon a small creak, frozen in its movement with the bite of winter. She bends at the knees to stroke at the frost covered bank, and sits until she hears steps behind her, and a low rumbling starts.

Lexa turns to find Clarke’s _pichu_ (pet) staring with an icy gaze that reflected much of the environment around them. She expects him to attack her given the way his pelt puffs in defense, but as quickly as his growling started, it stops, and he slowly lowers his head towards the ground. Quickly, he barks out a call of sorts, nothing resembling the roar of a puma or howl of a dog, but no less powerful.

The call must have been meant to alert someone near by, because as soon as the animal lowers himself to the ground, Lexa can hear human footsteps closing in from the distance, and soon enough Clarke’s clear shape emerges under the moonlight.

Clarke’s face—when she can make it out clearly enough—is hinted with concern but mostly adorns confusion, and Lexa almost laughs when the girl asks, “Was that Kou?”

“You named him?”

“Him?”

Lexa doesn’t respond, forgetting quite clearly that Clarke hasn’t spent enough time on the ground to know the difference between gender markings.

“Hold on,” Clarke mutters, shaking her head. “Restart.”

“Restart what?” 

Now Lexa feels confusion settle in.

Clarke sighs heavily, squatting down next to the animal—Kou, she needs to remember—lightly resting her hand against his haunch. 

Though the silence doesn’t give way to any other emotions, Lexa still feels confusion make its way through her head. 

“Why are you here, Clarke?” she says, anger from her previous outburst still rooted in her bones, but she wills herself to stay calm for Clarke’s sake.

Yet she almost considers killing the girl when she scoffs at her, stating, “I honestly ask myself the same question.”

Lexa feels hurt make its way into her at the statement, and she turns away completely to crouch near the bank of the creak once again. The ice is harsh against her fingers when she brushes it once again.

“You know, I don’t get to see snow like this very often. I think I’d prefer if I never saw it.”

There is no response for a while, but eventually she can hear Clarke’s heavy exhale and a quiet, “and why’s that?”

She huffs in a humorless laugh. “Snow this soft means Azgeda. They’ll kill me if they find me this close to them without a reason.”

Clarke’s response this time is immediate.

“You know I could just kill you for them.”

Lexa hates to admit she kind of expected the bitter truth behind her statement. 

_What have I done to this girl?_

She falters in her breath, and a puff of fog clouds around her face for a moment.

“You would have good reason to.” She knows it goes without saying that Clarke has all the reason—perhaps even all the right—to kill her, but she finds saying it out loud makes the truth stronger.

“Well, yeah. You left me to die, me and my people.”

“I thought you would have gone home.”

“Gone to what home, Lexa? A home without my friends? I couldn’t leave the only people that understood me.” Clarke’s breath hitches with the cold, but she continues anyways. “That’s what the plan was, right? Get them, save all of our people so that we can _all_ go home. But no, I had to do it myself.”

Lexa feels pain in her chest. She knows Clarke is right.

“I did save people. I saved my people. I did what was my responsibility as the leader of the twelve clans. I left us with that shadow of a mountain above our heads in order to save my people. How was I to believe a little girl from the stars who’d barely spent a moon on my lands could stop our greatest enemy?”

The desperation of her voice brings silence upon them. She fears the response that Clarke might have, knowing it could be biting, harsh, _true_. Instead, though, she can hear Clarke shifting behind her, and suddenly the girl is right next to her, stabbing a dagger into the dirt at the edge of the bank.

The girl’s hand goes rifling through the dirt, and after a second buried under the frost, she pulls her hand out to show off a small handful of roots. Clarke separates them from snow and dirt quickly, and pops one of the small things into her mouth, all while Lexa watches curiously. She offers one of the small delicacies to Lexa, and cautiously she takes one.

“I haven’t seen these before,” she mutters to Clarke. “They’re edible?”

The girl nods in between putting another frozen morsel into her mouth. “Though maybe not too great to be eating with the risk of hypothermia all around us.”

“Hypothermia?”

“Ever seen someone freeze to death?”

Lexa is startled at the girl’s blunt words, but nods nonetheless.

Clarke’s eyes sparkle slightly with the chance to teach someone they hadn’t known before, and she pushes through another mouthful of root, “That’s hypothermia. Someone’s body gets too cold and they die like that.” Her handful of roots reaches out towards Lexa, and her eyes follow. “Too many cold things like this speed up that process.”

The wonderful sense of emotion Lexa feels from Clarke makes her eyes burn, and she can’t help but gawk at the girl before her. She had expected more hatred, a burning hatred if anything. Never had she thought the broken thing she left on the mountain would be _teaching_ her in the middle of an Azgeda forest.

She speaks before she thinks.

“Why aren’t you angry?”

Clarke looks startled, and that sparkling glint in her eyes disappears without a trace. She looks down at her hands once more, almost depressive in her mood.

Yet, Clarke forces a brutish chuckle from her throat. “I never said I wasn’t. In fact I’m practically livid…but I guess I understand why you did it. It’s hard to stay consistently furious with someone over something you would have done yourself.”

`````

“Pike.” 

“Abby.”

“Chancellor Griffin to you.”

“Not for long.”

Charles Pike’s face is alight with smirking confidence, and Abby wants to wipe the expression off of him with her fist—or perhaps a chair.

“We all knew you were just a temporary leader anyways. Something to replace Jaha when he went and off-ed himself.”

Abby feels a shiver run up her spine at the careless words for a mislead man who had otherwise led their people quite well.

“Just because we haven’t heard from him, doesn’t mean he is dead.”

“Close enough.”

She glares at the man. “What did you need?”

Pike had bothered her in the middle of a meeting, practically dragged her outside claiming priority status over what was actually going on inside. 

Abby was thoroughly pissed.

Pike’s smirk seemed to grow. “Well,” he drawled. “I’ve recently accepted someone new into my guard. I was hoping you might be able to approve them for immediate release into active duty.”

Abby was confused. “Charles, you know we put every soldier on guard through a testing regimen, otherwise it’s hardly fair for them to be working in the field. Hardly safe, as well, for them to be holding weapons against civilians without proper assessment.”

“Oh.” Pike was hardly fazed. “But I feel you’ll find that this soldier has already proved himself more than worthy of fighting for our people.”

“And who is this _worthy_ soldier?”

“Bellamy Blake.”

`````

“Lexa?”

“Yes, Clarke.”

“I’m fucking freezing.”

“You may go back to the others…”

“I’d prefer if you came with me.”

The three of them—Clarke, Lexa, and Kou—had been waiting out in the cold for far than was considered healthy for any of them, especially the two members without insulating fur. However, Lexa’s anger had far from ebbed, but she felt the winter cold draining both the warmth and emotion from her body. She wasn’t ready to go back yet.

Clarke understood, though she still felt the shivers run up and down her spine with each drop in the temperature as the night grew later.

She hoped for all of their sakes that Lexa calmed down before they froze in their boots.

“Well,” Clarke started. “Since I’m not going back without you, do you mind if we talk to distract me from my ass falling off?”

Lexa, squinted. “Sometimes I have no idea what you’re saying.”

Clarke smiled, and pushed through chattering teeth a short “nevermind.”

They were quiet for a second, before Lexa interjected, “You said you wanted to talk?”

“Oh!” Clarke’s body jumped for a moment. “Right. I had a question.”

Lexa nodded.

“What was that back there?”

Her mood dropped with the temperature. A chill jolted Clarke’s spine.

Looking back at the frozen creak, Lexa mumbled, “Indra constantly feels the need to question everything I do. She may be my best general, but sometimes it gets a bit infuriating.”

“That’s reasonable,” Clarke replies. “She had a point though.”

The Commander’s green eyes zero in on Clarke once more, questioning.

“Why did you come out here?”

_Oh._

She isn’t quite sure how to respond to that, but finds that trying to formulate a proper response is practically useless. Instead, she speaks as her mind thinks.

“Octavia came to me on her knees begging for help. She said you were no where to be seen, hadn’t been for months. I had heard rumors about Wanheda herself traveling the woods, but thought it was more a passing tale between Trikru. I guess you could say I was shocked when I found out it was true. Octavia told me and I thought I owed it to you, after what I did. Clearly I underestimated your survival abilities.”

Clarke doesn’t look at her as she speaks, but turns towards her to respond.

“We had classes up in the Ark. Earth History. Charles Pike taught the survival skills portion.”

Lexa feels confusion spike into her.

“Pike?” she asks.

“Yeah?” Clarke herself looks just as confused.

“The same Pike that Octavia says is ruining your people?”


	7. Dated Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy's work for Pike takes an unexpected turn, and Clarke and Lexa might be revealing a little too much to their colleagues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I probably could have made this chapter longer. But there is a L O T going on this chapter, so I didn't want it to be too overwhelming and end up confusing everyone. WARNING: there is a suicide mention at the end of the chapter, but I have put a warning right before the section it is in.
> 
> Please leave any comments (criticism is COMPLETELY welcomed. I need it tbh...)

“Hey.”

“Hm.” Raven doesn’t look up from her pile of parts on her desk despite the greeting.

“I need you to fix something.”

“I’m always fixing something…” she grumbles, looking up to find Bellamy standing in the doorway of what she basically claimed as her office.

He smirks slightly, but Raven can’t sense any sort of actual humor in the expression.

“The rover broke down. We don’t know what’s wrong with it,” he states, resting a hand on the gun at his hip as if it were a regular arm rest. 

Raven eyes the action warily, but despite her caution, stands nonetheless and walks past Bellamy out the doorway.

“I’m an engineer, not a car mechanic. I hope you remember that,” she grunts out, pushing off her hip to avoid the pain spiking through her leg.

“You’re the best there is, though. If there’s anything you can fix, it’s a stupid old rover,” he responds, rushing just slightly ahead to lead the girl towards the rover.

Raven, for a moment, almost misses the kinds of conversations like this that she used to have with Bellamy. They’d always had their issues; both too headstrong and stubborn to work completely together. Yet, they both had the drive to help anyone that needed it in the few ways they could. They had bonded slightly over that, and Bellamy’s wise-crack jokes were actually pretty funny when he wasn’t obsessing over his own sister or getting himself into a whole mess of trouble.

She really did miss it.

“Rover’s this way.”

“I know where the damn thing is, Bellamy.”

He smirks at her over his shoulder. “I moved it, Raven.”

She feels ashamed for a second, but there are worse things than a little embarrassment.

“Yeah, yeah,” she mumbles. “Why do you need the thing fixed anyways? Planning on a little joyride out into the grounder infested wild?”

Bellamy’s smirk vanishes. “Pike needs me to do something for him.”

“Do what?” she prods, leaning forward slightly to get a good look at his face. They’re almost to the rover.

His eyes harden. “I’m afraid that’s classified information Raven. I just need you to fix the rover, not pry into my work.”

Raven raises her hands in surrender. “Sorry, jeez. Didn’t realize your work was all that important.”

He levels his gaze on her, opens his mouth, and she expects some sort of rant, maybe a threat. Instead, he snaps his jaw shut with a _click_ and pushes forward. They don’t say another word to each other until the rover roars to life and Bellamy mutters a “thank you” before he hops into the vehicle and drives past the gates of Arkadia, gun at his hip.

`````

The last thing Clarke expected when she followed Lexa out into the woods was to return to her cave feeling both significantly lighter and heavier. The weight of death on her shoulders doesn’t leave her back sore anymore, but a headache settles after the news about Pike.

Lexa offers very little information about the issue, simply stating that it would be best if she talked to Octavia about it, so abandoning any _atoning_ she and Lexa might have been doing, the two wander back to the cave.

Though Clarke stands next to part of the ways back, Kou quickly pushes himself between the two, letting loose a small growl when Lexa scrunches her nose at him.

She feels vaguely offended by the animal, yet she ignores him to catch up on their surroundings, constantly eyeing the forest for any sign of Azgeda soldiers.

“Clarke,” she mutters just after the glow of the cave comes into sight.

“What?” the girl responds.

Lexa glances warily at a particularly hollow looking part of the forest, not looking at Clarke as she speaks. “I feel you should know…I leave this place tomorrow, whether you come with or not.”

It almost feels like a burn erupts in Clarke’s chest, remembering only too closely how it felt when Lexa left her behind last time, even if she knows this time is completely different.

She simply nods in response.

When they return, Kou rushes back to his spot by Clarke’s furs, and Clarke herself resolves to take a spot next to Octavia instead, quickly mumbling her knowledge about Pike. Octavia begins informing her immediately.

At the same time, Lexa takes her place next to Indra, though chooses a spot noticeably farther than she had originally. Clearly, her anger has not ebbed, but Indra knows better than to offer a conversation.

Nothing breaks the two from their silence until Clarke practically screams in fury, and both Indra and Lexa are forced to acknowledge the problem they share.

“Little fucking shit!” Clarke yells, and Kou’s head lifts in worry. “Why does he always have to go and get himself into trouble?”

“He’s always been like this. He doesn’t think anything is going to get himself in trouble ‘cause he’s just doing what he thinks is best.” Octavia pushes her head into her hands. “I don’t even know what to do Clarke.”

Lexa feels the need to interject at this point, simply stating without removing her gaze from the fire, “Do you mind if I ask what exactly is happening?”

Octavia mutters, “Sorry, Heda. I told you Pike hasn’t done well for _Skaikru_ lately. Well my _bro_ may or may not be dealing just as well with that man. He’ll get himself killed some day.”

Lexa glances at Indra, who shares the same expression.

_We shouldn’t tell her…_

“It is necessary she knows, Heda,” Indra whispers.

She doesn’t respond, but continues to stare at Indra, pondering the consequences of telling the small girl her brother has already declared war.

“Know what?” 

_Octavia hears too much._

Lexa glances at the other two girls now.

“Your _bro_ has killed some of my men already, Octavia.”

“What?” The girl looks heart broken.

Lexa feels faintly guilty, but nods nonetheless.

“My brother wouldn’t…not without reason.”

Clarke eyes her warily from her place beside. “Octavia…”

“He wouldn’t without reason!”

She stands quickly, and Clarke’s first instinct is to pull the knife from her belt, backing up quickly away from Octavia.

“You say Pike’s goal is to turn all of _Skaikru_ against us?” Indra mutters, harshly glaring at her prior second for her burst of emotion.

“Bellamy Blake has never been _for_ us, Octavia,” Lexa inputs. “This is only to be expected.”

“Why do you even care!” Octavia yells.

Lexa fixes a glare on her, slowly standing from her place by the fire. Clarke quickly pushes a harsh “Octavia!” through her teeth, already tensing in anticipation for a fight.

Yet, Lexa stays calm as she approaches the younger _Skaikru_ girl.

“You must remember, _Okteivia kom Skaikru_ ,” she begins, uttering the last word as an insult. “I am here by _my_ will, to help you solve _your_ problems. _Remember your place._ ”

Octavia backs down in shame immediately, yet Clarke and Indra still eye the two others.

“ _Moba, Heda._ ” (I’m sorry, Commander)

Lexa nods faintly, but continues anyways. 

“Now, I suggest we all rest, figure this out before I _leave_ this wretched place tomorrow.”

`````

Bellamy’s crew rushes in the dark to find what they’re looking for. The hallway is lit only by flashlights on the ends of their guns, and when Bellamy shines a light around the walls of the hallway, there are cracks littering the space.

_It’s a miracle it hasn’t collapsed yet._

At the end of the hall, the door they need to break through is large, unopened since Mount Weather was irradiated by Clarke. Yet, it takes little more than a few blasters on the sides of the door and it comes crashing down with a _thud_ , leaving more dust in its wake.

Bellamy remembers this area. Though Mount Weather had considered it abandoned—and that meant no one had been down for centuries, or so they thought—but a blueprint plan of the area showed recent revision processes, meaning something important was down there.

_Though it doesn’t really look like it._

He scans the area, checking for any sort of life that _might_ be down there.

_Might_ , given that the entire mountain was deceased.

Prior to this mission, they had gradually been sending more and more of Farm Station down the halls of Mount Weather, avoiding quite strongly the areas largely infested with dead bodies. The area provides quite a lot of chances for the Arkers to gain some of their lost technology back. They had found very little of substantial value, but the recent discovery of those plans gave way for hope.

After all, they hadn’t found the nuclear bombs yet.

`````

The morning after is a little odd. Clarke wakes to find she actually slept through a decent part of the night, though not quite comfortably.

She is slumped against Kou, who despite normally taking off before dawn, actually stayed for once. Across the burnt out fire, Octavia lays wrapped in an aggressive amount of furs. Indra is awake, gazing out of the cave with her back to the fire; must have been for a while.

Clarke finds Lexa leaning into herself, relatively passed out as far as she can tell, because the sun has yet to wake the normally active girl. Her chin is tucked into her chest, arms crossed over her. One leg crosses the other out in front of her, and her back looks horribly crooked leaning against the side wall that holds the most of Clarke’s drawings.

It shocks her to realize that the one Lexa has chosen to sit under is, in fact, her worst nightmare. The deaths of Mount Weather always haunted her, but her nightmares never contained any of the actual radiation. Just the madness of her feelings when Lexa abandoned her. When she left, there was a never ending fire burning in her, rage, sadness, despair. Clarke felt surrounded by that fire, and crushed by a cloud over her. 

_That_ is what she sees at night.

Not the bodies, or the guns, no. She sees her father, Finn, endless fire.

She sees her selfish feelings.

And Lexa has chosen this exact place of Clarke’s insanity to sleep under, peaceful despite the chaos above her.

Yet it seems it does not only affect her.

Lexa’s eyebrows furrow, and a pained look comes across her face. She squirms in place, and Clarke carefully pulls away from Kou and shuffles the few feet to Lexa.

Clarke reaches towards the girl, but hesitates. Indra has not moved since Clarke began moving, which seems unlike her, and she wonders if maybe the general is asleep after all, still poised like the warrior she is.

Quickly she turns back to Lexa, and fully reaches out to place her hand on the other girl’s knee. The nightmare seems to ebb for a moment, and Lexa is frozen, but then suddenly the warrior’s hand has grabbed the blade at Clarke’s hip, shoving into the sky girl and pushing her to the ground. Clarke lands hard on her back, the air catching in her lungs, and she chokes on air at the feel of a blade on her throat. 

Lexa’s eyes are wild, beady little slits bearing down on her, and she feels more suffocated by the look Lexa gives her than the feel of Lexa’s entire body weight and more pressing into her from above.

Despite the pain she feels from both her landing, the knife at her throat, and Lexa’s body over her, she reaches out slowly to the other girl, gently placing her hand on the wrist at her throat.

“Lexa,” she croaks. “It’s me. It’s Clarke.”

Lexa does not move, but the sound of Indra waking and rushing to stand at the sight of them seems to snap Lexa out of it. Her eyes snap to Indra, back to Clarke, then dilate back to their normal size, and Clarke breathes out in relief. The knife leaves her skin, dropping to the ground beside her head. The pressure of Lexa above her lessens, and all that is left is the weight of Lexa over her hips as she straddles her.

There is absolutely no way to describe the look Clarke sees in Lexa’s eyes.

There is sadness, anger, disappointment, all emotions the human mind can feel. Yet, what Clarke sees most in Lexa is fear. A fear that glares down at Lexa’s shivering hand, the one that previously held a knife to her throat.

Lexa is frozen, and Clarke and Indra are no better.

Both are unsure of what to do.

Indra worries that any movement will trigger the Commander into a greater fit, but Clarke, despite the burning betrayal that still fills her chest at the sight of Lexa, feels a stronger pull to help the girl.

She knows Lexa. She knows the pain that comes with Leadership, the need to always be strong.

And the weakness she sees in Lexa is intoxicating.

`````

There is strength in numbers, but priority in less. 

There may be the power of an army. The ability to lose more without as many consequences. One soldier in a group of one hundred is far less worrisome than on soldier in a group of fifty, less than a soldier in twenty, or ten. Especially less worrisome than a soldier in five.

Yet having few is what gets things done. Less opinions to consider, less to organize, simpler. It’s easier to have less, and you can trust each individual more in a group of five over a group of five hundred. However, there is more to lose when you have less.

He never had much more than his sister and mother, so Bellamy has learned quite a bit about sacrifice since before he even went on the ground. He could sacrifice a lot when he had so much to lose, so little left for him in the grand scheme of things. 

Sacrifice his social life to protect his sister, sacrifice his life to shoot Jaha and make it into the Dropship with Octavia, sacrifice Lincoln to get information, sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice.

So when Pike tells him this is for the greater good, he follows.

“There are millions of them, it’s fine if a few hundred are hurt. It’ll protect us. It’ll protect your sister, Bellamy,” he says.

_Greater good, huh?_

“I can help with that.”

So that’s why the nuclear bombs didn’t seem like that bad of an idea.

_It’ll be quick, they said. It’ll be easy, they said. It’ll save all of our people, they said._

__

__

But what they didn’t say, was the truth.

`````

(WARNING: Suicide mention/past attempt in this section. Do not read if you will be affected by it)

No one moves for a moment, until they hear a clear horn in the distance. Three blasts wander through the forest to them. Clarke knows it must be the others.

She looks to the cave entrance, as do all others, except Octavia who merely groans in response. When she looks back at the girl on her hips, Lexa’s eyes are different.

No longer can she see the emotion in them. Now, it is just _Heda_.

“We haven’t been able to talk, but we must go now.” Lexa’s voice startles her, slightly croaky from lack of sleep.

Indra nods silently, already moving to nudge Octavia with her foot and ripping the furs off of her body to be packed up. Lexa, nearly jumps off of Clarke, and she rushes to grab her boots from the floor.

Clarke does the same, rousing Kou from his place.

“I will walk you to your group,” Clarke says, throwing her cloak on over her body.

Octavia seems to sharpen at this.

“You mean you will not come?” she practically screams.

Clarke looks down at the ground, feeling all three pairs of eyes burning into her at the question. 

_I came out here for a reason…_

She looks up at Octavia shamefully, eyebrows upturned in despair and she smiles apologetically. 

_No_ , she shakes her head.

Octavia looks furious. The girl squeezes her fist together, teeth almost cracking with the intensity of her clenched jaw. She looks like she might kill Clarke.

“Clarke,” she spits out. “We came here for _you_.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” she replies.

Indra scoffs. “I knew this was a waste of time. You _Natrona_ have only made our lives more difficult.” (Traitor)

Clarke feels a bitter taste in her mouth. She looks up at Lexa.

The girl’s eyes have betrayed her emotions again, and Clarke can see the hurt buried in them.

Octavia starts again.

“You are Skaikru, Clarke! You lead us when we first got down here! Do it again!”

Clarke wants to cry.

“I am nothing.” Octavia is shocked for a moment, stepping back, but Clarke keeps going. “I am nothing, Octavia.”

The fire returns to Octavia’s eyes, and she rushes up to Clarke, pushing her back. Kou growls, and from the corner of her eye, Clarke can see Indra and Lexa tensing.

“Go get Lincoln,” Lexa whispers, and Indra takes off running.

“You are Clarke Abigail fucking Griffin!” Octavia spits at her.

She raises her chin. “I am Wanheda.”

Clarke watches Lexa settle with confusion across her face.

She continues. “I am Wanheda, Commander of Death. I am a waste of space. I am useless. I am a _killer_ , Octavia. A fucking _murderer, and I deserve to die_.”

She points at herself in shame, and Octavia backs off, but Clarke is still upset.

“I have done nothing but kill, Octavia. Nothing good and hell, you hate me for it, don’t you?”

Octavia looks down at the ground.

“I thought so.” Clarke only now notices the tears spilling down her face. She wonders when that happened.

“We have all done things we regret, Clarke.”

The first time Lexa speaks, and Clarke can’t stop staring at her.

_She understands. She always has._

And yet, she still burns at the sight of her. 

_I’m all alone._

“I thought I might be better off dead you know, for the longest time.” She doesn’t look away from Lexa. “I even wasted a bullet on that feeling.”

She pulls back a section of her hair to show a barely healed scar on the side of her head. A chunk of her skin is pulled away.

Lexa wants to throw up.

“I missed, you know. Probably subconsciously pulled away, I remember being right here when I pulled the trigger, but…” she trails off, pointing to her temple desperately.

Octavia falls to her knees, hands digging into the dirt around the edge of the burnt out fire.

“I’m sorry,” the girl mutters.

“My second to last bullet, and I haven’t used another since.” Clarke has yet to look away from Lexa, and still doesn’t move her gaze as she reaches for the gun at her hip.

“One last bullet,” she says, gazing down at the gun in her hand. “And I’ve been saving it for when I tip over the edge.”

She looks down at Octavia, who holds her head down in shame.

“That’s why I came out here Octavia. I have a job to d—“

Octavia’s head whips up, and she screams, “Killing yourself won’t help anyone but yourself.”

Clarke knows she’s right, but—

“Maybe I need to be selfish for once.”

She knows Octavia understands from the look in her eyes. There is far too much understanding. Octavia has lost so much to begin with. She never had a life until her feet touched the ground, and even that life—though grateful, she is, for even having one—has not exactly been pleasant.

“I can’t go back to them, Octavia.” 

And Octavia nods, but then—

“Then don’t.” Lexa’s voice breaks them from their moment. “Don’t go back.”

Clarke shakes her head. “It is here, or there, Lexa.”

“No,” she disagrees. “I offered you a chance to see our capital, back outside of Mount Weather. My offer still stands, Clarke.”

“Your people would never accept me.”

“My people see you as a hero.”

Clarke goes to object. Tell her that she is a hero in cold blood, but Lexa interrupts before a word can leave her.

“I know. I do not consider myself a hero despite what my people say, and I know why you do not either. But you will have a home among those in Polis. A place to heal, Clarke, without Azgeda at your back, or solitude looming above your head. Polis is enlightening Clarke.”

She considers, and suddenly footsteps come rushing to the cave.

Indra, Lincoln, and Ryder all come barreling through the entrance of the cave, Lincoln sprinting to Octavia immediately at the sight of her hunched on her knees. Ryder and Indra hang back.

Clarke looks between all of them, but lands on Lexa, and does not move.

“And what of all of this between the Arkers. I don’t want to go back there, Lexa.”

Lexa nods, calm, hand in front of her. Clarke has still not let go of the gun.

“Until you are ready, I can attempt to make contact with Arkadia, with your mother. I can let her know where you are, and hopefully I can make amends for what I’ve done.” She pulls her hand to her heart. “I will deal with your people, Clarke, and if you wish to help as you can _from Polis_ , you may. You do not need to go back.”

All is deadly quiet for a moment. Clarke’s gaze leaves Lexa’s in the silence, and she stares at Octavia’s shaking form for a moment, watching as Lincoln’s hand brushes over her back, quiet words of Trigedasleng into her ear.

There is a calm that washes over Clarke in this moment, and before anyone can react, Clarke cocks the gun into place.

Lexa lunges forward when Clarke moves her finger to the trigger and raises the gun, and she knows she is too late.

But Clarke does not fire the gun into her head, instead moving above her, and firing straight into the ceiling directly on top of her.

All eyes stare petrified at her, and Octavia’s slight sob is the only noise in the whole cave.

Clarke’s arm falls the her side with a smack, and the gun goes crashing into the ground.

She looks up to Lexa.

“Wouldn’t want to do anything stupid with that on the way to Polis.”


	8. Election Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arkadia hosts their first election on the ground, but it might be bloodier than anyone would have liked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: major character death fairly early on in this chapter.
> 
> Hey guys, shorter chapter this time around, but there's a lot happening from the beginning of this chapter and I wanted a certain transition into the major plot of this story. Fair warning, things are about to get crazy.
> 
> Please leave your comments and criticism. All opinions are welcomed and encouraged. Thanks for reading!

“Care to explain why you haven’t attacked The Ark yet?”

Lexa raises an eyebrow at Clarke’s question. She looks ahead at the girl, red hair matted against her shoulder as the looks behind her.

“Care to explain why you think I would have?”  
She swears she sees a smirk grace Clarke’s features, but she turns away too quickly, rushing through the forest like a seasoned hunter.

“You know Bellamy has been killing your people. I’m confused why you wouldn’t have attacked us.”

Lexa holds pace with Clarke as they walk through the forest towards Lincoln and Ryder’s camp. Octavia and Indra stay a few paces behind, and Clarke’s _pichu_ had long disappeared into the woods surrounding them.

“We have no proof it was her _bro_ , just know multiple reports have come in that Skaikru weapons have killed many hunters, gatherers, anyone wandering the forest near The Ark. I suspect from what Okteivia has told me that it has to be Bellamy Blake.”

Clarke nearly trips over a root under her, and Lexa can see a certain weakness in her that was not there when she last saw her. At the mountain she was strong, and though now she is strong in her own way, something about the sky girl settles within Lexa.

_I’ve caused all of this._

“Lexa…?”

She looks up quickly, not aware she had stopped walking until Clarke spoke.

“I asked why you still didn't attack The Ark if you knew it was Skaikru?”

Lexa starts walking again.

“You left one of the _maunon_ , did you not?”

Clarke seems startled, but nevertheless keeps pace as Lexa now takes the front of the group.

“Emerson…” she mumbles. Lexa nods in response.

They are quiet for a moment, only the hushed whispers of Indra and Octavia in the back ground and the sounds of their careless feet upon the earth break the silence.

At first, Lexa thinks they just won’t talk the whole rest of the way, as the clearing where Lincoln and Ryder _should_ be comes into view, but Clarke decides she has more to say.

“Thank you,” she whispers, and Lexa looks back in confusion. “For letting us figure this out on our own.”

Lexa tilts her head in recognition, eyebrow quirking slightly at the other girl.

“We might be ‘savages,’ as your people call us, but we do believe in fair justice. I would not do anything against anyone if I were unsure that they were guilty.”

`````

(WARNING: major character death in this scene)

Abby rushes to the make-shift courtyard of The Ark upon word that there was restless behavior, though she was shocked to find that, despite the incredible amount of Arkers gathered into a group in the middle of the courtyard, no one was creating any sort of disturbance.

She especially notices Charles Pike standing on top of the rover, gun across his shoulder and Bellamy Blake below him.

Quickly, she pushes through the crowd, all of whom watch her with intense eyes as she rushes to Pike.

“What’s going on!” she yells, just before reaching Bellamy, who places a light hand on her shoulder to keep her from coming closer.

Pike smiles down at her. “Election day, Abby!”

“What?” she barks.

At this, she can hear the harsh screams of Raven break through the crowd, and suddenly the girl appears, hands pulled behind her back as Miller pushes her to the rover.

“Let me go you little fucker! I’ve got problems and walking like this doesn’t solve them!”

“Raven,” Abby mutters, and the girl glares in her direction, though she can see confusion and some fear tinged in the mechanic’s expression.

“Citizens of Arkadia!” Pike starts. “Today, you will have a new Chancellor, and here’s why!”

Quickly, Bellamy rounds the back of the rover and roughly pulls open the door. Immediately falls the body of Marcus Kane, and the crowd gasps. Kane groans on the ground, but looks to be heavily under the influence of some sort of drug.

Abby intends to run to his side, but Pike continues speaking.

“Your temporary Chancellor, Abby Griffin, as well as your candidate for true Chancellor, Marcus Kane, have been conspiring against all of you!”

At this, all eyes point to her, but she keeps her gaze trained on the cold man above her.

“What is this, Pike,” she spits through clenched teeth.

“Justice, Abby.” 

He smiles, then turns back to the crowd. “You see, the people you have put your faith in have been working with the savages outside of these walls! Many may not know, as she has kept it hidden from everyone, but Abby Griffin’s daughter, Clarke, has been missing for months now. And who has she enlisted to find out beloved Princess of the Sky? The same _child_ that ordered our deaths at the mountain, the _Commander of the Grounders!_ ”

Hushed whispers break out from the crowd. Abby hears whispers of “traitor” and “the Commander” and her daughter’s name. 

Raven suddenly limps over to her side, having been released by Miller.

Abby knows this is not good.

“Not only has she become such _good_ friends with the Grounders, but she has been planning to kill all of us on the side!”

Suddenly, Bellamy and Miller hop into the rover, then quickly return holding the straps of a band wrapped around what looks to be a giant bomb.

Raven goes sheet white, and Abby sees the fear grip the girl.

“This,” Pike gestures. “Is a _nuclear missile_ —”

The crowd gasps, and many push back away from the deadly weapon.

“—And your candidate for Chancellor has been sending my men in and out of the destruction that is Mount Weather to find this specific item.”

Abby sees a smirk grace his features.

“Why, you might ask?” Pike, at this, hops onto the hood of the rover, pointing his deadly finger down at the two on the ground. “Because Abby Griffin and Marcus Kane, with the help of Raven Reyes have been plotting with the savage Queen of the Grounders to annihilate every last one of us with this exact missile.”

Shouts erupt around them, and suddenly the crowd surges forward, spitting at the two standing.

Abby looks to Kane on the ground, who seems now to be coming back from his stupor, pushing himself up on his elbows. She wants to tell him to stay down, but Pike seems to see him awaken just as she does.

The crowd screams louder as Pike drops off the rover, pushing Abby and Raven against the side of the vehicle with the threat of a hand pistol, and rushes to Kane’s side. Pike grabs at Kane’s neck, and the man yelps when suddenly Pike points his pistol at the underside of Kane’s jaw.

Abby screams, pushing off the ground to get to him, but Bellamy beats her in height, weight, and strength, and hold both her and Raven back as Pike threatens Kane.

“This traitor,” Pike screams. “Wants us all dead, because he favors the people who have killed us since our children first set foot on this earth!”

The crowd roars in agreement.

“For that—” 

The gun travels from under Kane’s jaw to against his temple. Abby looks at the man on his knees, and in his eyes sits a desperation she feels herself. Kane shows disappointment, fear, uncertainty, but above all, he shows a calm in his eyes that Abby cannot understand.

“—he must pay!”

Kane’s eyes do not leave hers as the bullet implants itself into his head and his body slumps into the muddy ground below.

`````

Octavia’s reunion with Lincoln was bittersweet, as Lexa insisted they leave immediately. They were given one quick kiss on the lips and five minutes to pack up camp before Lexa inevitably left them behind, though Lincoln and Ryder might have spent a solid minute wondering whether or not the girl before them really was _Klark kom Skaikru_.

Clarke herself only had a small pack on her back, leaving most of her furs in the cave for some weary wanderer to find on a cold night, throwing only a few layers into the bag, her water, weapons, and some dried meat.

When glancing around at the clearing surrounding them, feet crunching against the snow underfoot, she feels a strong shudder spike through her spine, and she swears she can hear the echo of a gun shot in the distance. Yet, she decides the haunted feeling in her gut is nothing more than a reaction to leaving the closest thing to home since landing on the ground.

When ready, the group mounts the horses that had patiently waited in the cold overnight until they could leave again. 

Each member mounts their horse, but suddenly seem to realize that Clarke has no animal to ride herself.

Octavia feels herself ready to offer a place on her horse until Lexa sidles up next to the girl.

“If you’d like, you may ride with me. However, I’m sure Octavia would be willing to accommodate you as well.” Octavia nods in response to the glance both Lexa and Clarke shoot to her.

Clarke seems to consider going with Octavia for a moment, but instead opts to tilt her head to Lexa instead, and quickly Lexa offers a hand to the sky girl. They grab at each others wrists, and Lexa pulls the girl up behind her on the horse with ease. She starts to lead her horse out of the clearing before Clarke’s hand on her back stops her. She looks behind her to watch as Clarke squints into the forest, searching for something. 

All eyes watch her as she waits, then Clarke lets out a belting “Kou!” and heavy footsteps come breaking through the forest. The lynx comes sliding into the clearing, immediately rushing to Lexa’s horse, who huffs in fear at the sight of the cat.

Lexa shushes the animal as Clarke stares down at the lynx.

“Will he survive in Trikru weather?”

She recalls all information she can remember about the big cat, whether or not he really can survive in warmer weather. Lexa faintly remembers something Gustus taught her in her early days as Commander.

“He is adaptable,” she tells Clarke. “It will take some time, but he will grow used to it.”

A smile graces Clarke’s features, and she quickly turns back to the cat, gesturing in a point of her finger for Kou to stay by them.

They leave immediately after.

`````

Things do not settle as Bellamy and Miller place the missile into the back of the rover once more, and Abby has zero time to accept the death of her love before Bellamy is back in front of her forcing her hands behind her back and pushing her to the prisoner’s quarter of The Ark. 

She hardly breathes as she stumbles along her way, though she can faintly hear Raven screaming obscenities behind her, presumably in the hands of Miller once more. It isn’t until Bellamy locks her and Raven into the cell and lays his hand lightly against the bars that Abby seems to snap out of it.

She looks up at the boy who used to be so misunderstood, and she regrets how his life played out on the ark. Yet, she feels so much anger towards him, and she knows she should have expected as such from him.

He tried to kill Jaha up in the sky, and now essentially has killed Kane on the ground.

She thinks of every insult to call him in the moment, passionate hatred towards the boy who aided in the death of her lover, but instead—

“You had so much promise, and look at where it led you.”

In Bellamy’s eyes, she only sees shame.

````` 

NOTE: Updated (5 December 2017).

Their journey away from Azgeda territory is fair uneventful, filled mostly with tense silence and hesitant glances.

Upon leaving, Clarke places a gently hand upon Lexa’s waist, briefly asking permission. The Commander only nods in response, and Clarke places her other hand comfortably.

“I feel like I’m going to fall off of this thing.”

“ _Keryon_ will not allow such a thing. She is unwilling to jeopardize her rider. It is part of the reason why I chose her as my _gapa._ ” (Horse)

Clarke smiles, slightly, brushing her hand against the animal’s side.

“You mean it didn’t have to do with how beautiful she looks?”

“She is striking, I will not deny it.”

Clarke can hear the smile in her voice, and carefully she leans forward around Lexa, just enough to catch a glimpse of a smirk on the Commander’s mouth. She moves back into her place behind Lexa, unwilling to risk a fall.

Cautiously, she turns over her shoulder to eye the crowd behind her.

Indra rides closely behind on the left, followed by Ryder on the opposite side, and Lincoln and Octavia, who ride side by side.

Though she can see Lincoln and Octavia’s mouths moving in conversation, she can’t hear what is being said, and only recognizes the indignant expression in Octavia’s eyes.

Clarke understands the feeling of anger towards Lexa, still currently feels it herself, yet can never bring herself to truly hate the girl. More so, she is frustrated at the situation, disappointed in her own self for being unable to consider a better option than killing three hundred people.

She tries not to think about it. Anger does not lend well when the person of interest currently shares a seat with her.

Instead, she ignores Octavia’s blatant hatred, and places her hands securely onto Lexa’s hips once more.

As they ride along, hours away from her camp, she hears the sounds of running water.

“Is there a river nearby?” she ponders, aloud.

Lexa responds with a nod, though Clarke hadn’t really been expecting a response.

She glances over the trees, trying to spot the glistening of unfrozen water.

“Would you like to stop?” Lexa interrupts, already slowing her horse.

“Can we?” Clarke turns over to make eye contact with Lexa. “I feel like I need to wash this out of my hair.”

That sly expression appears on Lexa’s face again.

“It may do you well. You reek of death, if I am honest.”

She frowns purposefully, glaring almost lightheartedly at the girl in front of her.

Sharply, Lexa turns her horse towards the sounds of the river, and though Indra questions quite vocally what they are doing, Clarke watches as the girl ignores her warrior in favor of speeding up.

_Keryon_ , as Clarke remembers the name, moves quickly into a trot, then gallops. Clarke glances to find Kou running to catch up, and smiles when they finally break out into a clearing, a small lake forming at a dip in the ground. The river at the right of Clarke spreads out into the ditch that the lake has formed, and continues its moving path to her left.

She stares at the glistening water, wondering if it is nearly as cold as _Azgeda_ water. Yet, she finds out soon enough when Lexa gestures with a hand for Clarke to grab on, and the girl gracefully lowers her onto the ground from atop the horse. Lexa comes following soon after, stepping quickly to catch up as Clarke walks to the lake edge.

Dipping her hand in, Clarke finds the water to be cold enough to freeze her if she spends enough time in it, but hardly anything to worry about hypothermia over. Quickly, she pulls her shirt over her head, barely paying attention to Octavia’s sudden interjection at the edge of the clearing, or the sounds of her feet landing on the ground from their horses. Instead, she peels off her pants quickly, leaving her only in her shorts and chest bindings she had purchased from a merchant when her Ark bra left little to the imagination.

As smoothly as possible, she wades up to her waist in the water, then—as she had seen in old Earth films—dives with her arms over her head under the surface. She stays under, for a moment, opening her eyes enough to see the mud just underneath her and light shining above her. She floats, in space, feeling almost cleansed as the water around her takes up a red, cloudy color. She pushes, powerfully, with her feet against the mud below her, and glides back to the surface.

Above, she finds Lexa standing at the bank, looking quite concerned but clearly unwilling to show it.

Accept Clarke knows, but she wouldn’t let Lexa see that either.

Languidly, she swims to where her feet can comfortably touch once more, and immediately dunks her head under the water again, this time fingering through the curls to release all the dirt and grime and blood.

From the bank, Lexa watches Clarke wash away the evidence of her time in the wilderness. She feels the urge to smiles, feeling Clarke may be washing away a bit more than just dirt from her skin, but also knowing she has no right to feel joy for the young girl.

She does, however, feel the need to crack a small joke, completely aware of heavy stares on her back.

“I will admit, if I thought there was anything you may be a natural at on the ground, I did not expect it to be swimming.”

Clarke’s scrubbing stops, and she looks up at the girl on shore. 

Lexa is stunned by blue eyes, alight with something new, free.

“I used to watch sports with my father!” she explains, reaching briefly to splash some water onto her face. “If there’s one thing I remember, it’s what real swimming looked like!”

`````

NOTE: End of update.

When Clarke is clean, they travel almost endlessly to get to TonDC, and when they do, it is after days of riding and only a few hours until dark. Octavia and Lincoln leave immediately in order to make it before dark, and Lexa informs Clarke and Ryder they’ll stay overnight and head off in the morning. 

They end the night with a good meal of hot meat with the people of TonDC, and Clarke falls asleep peacefully for once in a bed of furs, Kou curled on the ground beside her.

When she wakes in the morning, it is to yelling outside of the tent she had been allowed residence in the night before. Quickly, she pulls on the rags of clothes she has left and arms herself with her weapons. She ushers for Kou to stay still at his place and bursts from the entrance to the tent to find Lexa ushering a medic over to Lincoln and Octavia.

Octavia looks relatively unscathed, save for a scratch against her cheek and dirt upon her skin. Lincoln, on the other hand, sports an ugly bullet wound on his calf. He needs intense help to even stand on his own, and Clarke sprints to make it to him in order to help him onto a stretcher.

They pull Lincoln into the tent used for medical, and Clarke shifts into over drive as she quickly assesses his wound. Faintly, she can hear trigedasleng spoken quickly behind her as people pass, but she knows too little of the language and can’t even begin to focus on trying to understand what she does know. Octavia holds his hand at the side of his cot as she begins working, and she can see from the corner of her eye that Lexa and Indra stand at the entrance to the tent.

The bullet went straight through his leg, and immediately she sighs with relief and informs Octavia she won’t need to do any surgery.

“I just need to stop the bleeding, and if he stays off it for as long as possible, he shouldn’t lose his leg.”

Quickly, she patches up the wound, stitching it closed with the medical supplies the healer’s young second had roughly pushed into her hands. She wraps the wound in clean bandages also brought to her and orders the healer’s second to sprint to grab her bag. The boy returns in less than two minutes, and she injects Lincoln with some pain killers from her pack and he falls unconscious nearly right away.

It is only until she knows he is out completely and his pulse is steady and strong that she breathes normally and looks to Octavia for an explanation.

The girl nods in understanding, but asks if Lincoln is ok.

“For now, so long as he doesn’t have some sort of reaction. He’ll be fine if we leave him.”

At this, Octavia reluctantly releases his hand and stands, pulling Clarke towards Lexa and Indra. The four leave the medical building and walk to one of the few good homes Lexa had stayed in the night before.

Lexa ushers to Ryder to keep everyone out, and they enter quietly.

“We have a problem,” Octavia mutters upon entrance to the living room of the home.

“Obviously,” Clarke responds.

Lexa stands at the edge of the table in the center of the room, and gestures for Octavia to speak.

“They’ve killed Kane. He’s dead, and your mother and Raven are locked in prison.”

Clarke startles, and when she glances at Indra, she can see a certain sort of pain in the warriors eyes.

“Your _bro_?” Lexa asks, seemingly undisturbed by the news.

“He’s the one who told me.” Octavia breathes harshly. “Lincoln and I came in the back way, the one not many people know about. We tried to find your mom, but we found Bellamy instead. He told us what happened, seemed petrified that I was there. He told us we needed to leave, helped us get out. They shot at Lincoln and I when we got past the walls but, well you saw what happened.”

“Bellamy helped you out?” Clarke asks, shocked at the news.

Octavia nods. “He said they framed Kane, Raven, and your mom. Something about a nuclear bomb.”

Clarke steps back at the words, hand over her mouth in shock, stumbling on her own feet.

“Oh no. No no no.”

“Clarke,” Lexa says.

“No, they’ll kill us all.”

“Clarke!” 

Lexa places a hand on Clarke’s shoulder, and the girl stares at her with confused eyes.

Clarke shakes her head, tears suddenly surfacing.

“Lexa, they’ll kill every single one of us.”

Her eyes are wide in fear, and Lexa feels that same fear shoot through her, but she steels herself for the girl before her.

“You have to explain, Clarke.”

But she can’t.

She knew Mount Weather held massive weapons in their facility. The missile at TonDC was proof of that, but she never expected her own people would ever seek out such destructive materials.

“Clarke,” Lexa practically yells to get her to come back to reality. “Please.”

Octavia interjects.

“Nuclear missiles caused this entire problem to begin with, _Heda._ ”

She looks at the young warrior, encouraging her to explain, but Indra speaks instead.

“ _Praimfaya?_ ”

Octavia nods quickly.

Lexa looks to Clarke. The girl is shaking in her place, and she wants nothing more than to be able to calm her, but she knows better. Instead, she speaks.

“What do we do?”

No one has an answer.


	9. Unsteady Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke's only option is the one she fears the most, she must go back. But there is more to her return than a simple breakout.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. Sorry it's been some time since I posted. School just started and I'm sure most of you know how hectic that gets. However, I hope to be posting more often, as I am really dedicated to this story and I like the way it's going so far. 
> 
> I understand that I'm taking a bit of a tangent on this story, as far as branching away from Polis is concerned. However, it won't be too long before we do see the opportunity for Clarke's full recovery. If you can just bare with it for a while, I'm hoping it'll be worthwhile.
> 
> Hopefully I am not alone in this lmao, and hopefully you all haven't given up on this story..
> 
> Anyways, any and all critiques are welcome. Leave a comment and I can take it into account with my later chapters and such.

“We need to come up with something as soon as possible,” Clarke says, mostly to herself.

“I know this, Clarke,” Lexa mumbles in return.

The poor sky girl had been muttering obscenities for the past half an hour at least, and no results had come from it. Octavia had returned to Lincoln’s side and Indra left to do something of her people. At this point, Lexa was ready to run through her own sword to ease the pain of her headache.

She pinched at the bridge of her nose to relieve some of the pressure.

Clarke, unfortunately, noticed.

“Headache?” Lexa only stared at her, as if the answer weren’t obvious enough.

“Sorry,” Clarke muttered. “I know this is a lot.”

“It is not just for me that this is a lot, Clarke. Your people are at risk for this as well. The entire world may be obliterated unless we can find some sort of solution.”

Lexa leans heavily against the table in front of her, lined with maps of her territory as well as what she knew of _Skaikru’s_ facilities. In the upper right corner was the newest of the maps, one Clarke had drawn of Mount Weather sometime in the last few months. It may have been new but it was not fresh, caked in dirt and torn at the edges. Lexa stares at it intently, furious that even after their deaths the Mountain Men were still threatening her people.

Never before had she faced something so potentially devastating in her time as Commander. A nuclear bomb could ruin everything. It could kill her people and—at this point her gaze shifted to the blonde at the other side of the room—it could kill Clarke.

The small but ferocious girl who terrified her people, who defeated the mountain, who harbors the ancient name of _Wanheda_ , who holds all of that on her shoulders as if it is a _bad_ thing.

“—exa.”

She snaps out of it, slightly ashamed, and looks to Clarke.

“I think I need to go to Arkadia,” the girl states, so simply.

“Absolutely not,” she replies, once again glancing at the maps in front of her.

“Lexa, I need to fix this.”

“You feel you need to fix everything, Clarke.”

“These are my people, causing problems for yours.” She steps forward, almost invading Lexa’s idea of a comfortable space between them.

“That doesn’t mean sacrificing yourself in order to _attempt_ to fix something a bunch of _branwadas_ started.”

“It’s my problem, Lexa. My people.” She looks at the driven girl before her, and sees she can’t win the argument.

“Fine, but I won’t let you leave without a plan I trust.”

Clarke nods quickly, and leaves the room without a word.

Lexa looks back at the map of Mount Weather, and eyes the simple dot of blood at the corner of the paper.

`````

“Abby there has to be something we can do.”

She doesn’t respond to Raven’s words, staring as she had for hours at the mismatched color of the metal wall in the Ark’s prison.

Raven crouches in front of the woman before her, as best she can with her busted leg. “Maybe we can escape. The guards can’t even hear us in here, we could just slip out somehow.”

_She sounds desperate._

“Abby, please!”

“Raven, stop.”

Raven looks up, eyeing the form of Bellamy through the bars of the prison.

“When did you get here, traitor…” She says it as hardly a question.

“Raven, I didn’t want this.”

“Wait is that regret I hear? Regret that you just condemned the human race to death? Am I right?” She cups her ear in dramatic effect, standing from her position on the floor.

Bellamy looks down, but seems to hold little shame.

“The goal is to eradicate any resistance to what we’re doing here. We aren’t going to actually use the bomb for anything but leverage.”

Raven is fuming.

“Is that what Pike told you? That this was some bargaining tool?” Bellamy doesn’t respond.

“What he wants to eradicate, you dumbass, is the entire Grounder population entirely, Bellamy!”

“Maybe they’d deserve it…” he mumbles.

“They’d what?”

“Maybe they’d deserve to die, Raven! After all that they’ve put us through…They took Finn away from you. Don’t you think they deserve something after that?”

She shakes her head.

“You know who took Finn away from me? Lexa…and she isn’t all grounders, Bellamy. She is one, and Finn deserved it. You know who doesn’t? An entire fucking race of people!”

“They’ve forced us to do this. Forced Clarke to kill all those people, and now she’s gone. Forced us to play this stupid game of theirs. They’ve caused all this.”

“No, you know what they caused, Bellamy?” He looks at her, confused. “They caused us to _grow up_.”

`````

Clarke hoped her plan would go off without a hitch. 

Have Octavia get her in. Find her mother and Raven. Get them out. If she can’t find them, find Pike. Kill Pike. All done.

“I will send one of my warriors with you.”

Lexa’s voice is jolting, and she nearly jumps at the surprise of it.

“No,” Clarke interrupts. “If I go with one of your people then they have justification to attack you. But if I come back fighting against them then they have no one else to hurt but one of their own.”

“That’s the problem. If they capture you, Clarke, then it is under their jurisdiction to do as they please with you. I will not let one of the few _Skaikru_ I trust—with this be slaughtered.”

Clarke ignores the slight break in her words.

“I won’t be slaughtered.”

_Just maybe shot a couple times…_

“Clarke, I told you to give me a plan I could trust, but I won’t let you follow through with one you don’t trust yourself.”

Get in. Find them. Get out. Get in. Find Pike. Find Pike. Find Pike. Get out.

“I’ll be fine,” she says, but her words don’t quite meet the truth.

Get out. Get out. Get them out.

Lexa’s face squeezes it’s way into her view. Her eyes are hard at the prospect of battle, but Clarke can see the worry on her face.

“If you can’t find them, kill Pike. Octavia can get you out afterwards.”

 

Find them. Find Pike. Kill him.

Kill _them._

“Right, because I’m _Wanheda_ now. Ready to kill, huh?” Her expression is despairing as she looks to the ground at her feet. Lexa knows she needs to convince the girl otherwise.

“ _Wanheda_ does not mean you kill everyone you see. _Wanheda kom uf_ (Wanheda is strength). You are an enigma, Clarke. My people consider you of another world.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“ _Wanheda_ was not born from you. The name has been around for generations.”

“I don’t understand.”

She hesitantly looks down at the table in front of her, glancing once again over the map of Arkadia that Clarke and Lincoln had been able to draw up.

“There are those who _hedon wamplei_ (command death) and there is _Wanheda_. They are not one and the same.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“You are not a murderer just because you are _Wanheda_. You kill as you need to, but you are still kind hearted and stubborn and brutally willing to protect your people. You are still _Klark_.”

When Lexa turns to the girl and looks up, she can see the shimmering of tears in Clarke’s eyes, and she worries she may have upset the girl at first, until there are arms around her shoulders and the tell tale feel of breath against her neck. She hesitates in reciprocating, but nevertheless raises an arm to wrap around the girl’s waist, and she can feel a slight heave in Clarke’s breathing.

Slowly, Clarke pulls away, but not enough to force Lexa to remove her hand. Clarke’s hands rest on Lexa’s neck, thumbs lightly setting on her jaw, and she can see a glint of emotion in the brunette’s eyes.

“You are far from forgiven for what happened at the Mountain, but…Lexa, thank you.”

Lexa barely manages to nod in response, practically in awe at the girl before her.

`````

The plan starts off fine. She seems to float in and out of space as they travel through the woods to the back of camp, as Octavia signals through the radio to Indra that they’ve made it, as she’s pushed into the Ark. Time seems to move so slowly as they flee down hallways, avoiding guards, Arkers, anyone who can find them.

_And kill us._

She thinks heavily that she has no one to protect her anymore. Kane’s wish for peace with the grounders died along with him, and now the only other high status person she has at least some influence over is locked up.

She can’t help but think maybe today might be the last of her days, if something goes horribly wrong.

Yet, Octavia leads her through the Ark like she has no fear, and maybe she doesn’t. 

They pass a walkway and are nearly stunned at the body that suddenly emerges in front of them.

“Holy shit, you two!” 

It’s Monty, and Clarke has never missed his never-ending concerned expression so much.

“Clarke!” he yells, and Octavia smashes him into a side wall with a hand over his mouth before he can let out another sound.

“Shut your mouth, Monty! You’ll get all both killed!” Octavia hisses, glancing up and down the hallways around them.

Clarke is shocked into silence.

Slowly, Octavia releases her grip on Monty, and he quietly whispers at them.

“What the hell is happening, guys?”

Clarke finds her words.

“Breakout. Where’s Mom and Raven?”

Monty’s expression grows petrified.

“I don't know if you can get to them, Clarke. They’re under heavy guard, under Bellamy’s watch.”

At this, Octavia interjects, “My brother? That fucking idiot.”

Clarke steps in front of Octavia to get right next to Monty.

“You need to get me into their cell. Find some way to break the lock. Monty I need you to do this for me. We need to get them out.”

The boy is silent for a moment, but almost instantly his expression shifts from fear to realization.

“I have an idea.”

`````

 

Lexa is staring intently into the eyes of the big cat when Indra walks in on the two of them, most likely attempting to relay information.

 

The general briefly stops at the doorway, halting in her discovery of the cat’s presence. He glances at her before resuming his stare down with Lexa.

“I can’t believe you haven’t killed that thing,” Indra mutters, circling the cat as far as she can in order to reach Lexa’s side.

“He is Clarke’s. I have a feeling she’ll cut off my hand if I so much as look at him wrong.”

The cat seems to perk up at the mention of the blonde, and Lexa questions how he would be able to recognize the name so easily.

“Well, you seem to be doing a lot of looking at him right now.”

“ _Shof op._ ”

“Octavia says they made it to Arkadia without any problems. They were about to enter the camp when she radioed us.”

“Did she say anything about Clarke?”

Indra glances away from the cat for a minute to eye her Commander.

“No.”

Lexa nods in silence, still in a deadlock with Clarke’s cat.

Indra turns back to the cat when she speaks next.

“You seem very intent on the sky girl.”

“Clarke is not an idiot. I respect that.”

“Maybe a little more than respect it.”

“Mind your tongue. Was that all I needed to hear?”

Indra sighs quietly. “ _Sha, Heda._ ”

And with that she circles back around the cat to the exit, but hesitates at the doorway, staring at the two before her.

 

“Do not forget what happened the last time a _Fragheda_ came near us.”

`````

Monty hooks them up in his room, leaving the two girls to wait quietly as he leaves, supposedly in an attempt to gain what he needs for his plan.

The plan he hasn’t exactly explained to them yet.

But in the end, when he returns with three gas masks and a canister of _something_ , Clarke thinks she kind of gets the idea.

Octavia points out the flaws automatically.

“How do you expect us to get out two dead weights if we knock them out. I might be able to carry one of them but Clarke’s all skin and bones. I doubt she could lift a stick right now.”

“Mind yourself,” she mutters, wringing her hands because she _is_ weak.

_In more ways than one._

Monty just smiles at Octavia’s distaste.

“See, here’s the plan.”

`````

Get the mask on. Get the trigger off. Throw the canister into the hallway. There shouldn’t be any guards inside. Just outside. Throw the canister. Knock them out. Knock them out. Throw. Open the door. Unlock the door. Open it. Get the masks to Mom and Raven. The masks. Remember the masks.

Clarke can’t figure out why she panics so much, why she needs to run through the plan so many times.

Octavia is the one actually doing it.

Clarke rushes to the exit where, in ten minutes, she should hopefully be able to guide Octavia, Abby, and Raven out of the Ark and to safety.

When Monty stops at their designated checkpoint halfway between the jail and the exit, she whips around and hugs the life out of him.

“I’ll come back for you. For everyone,” she says, pats his cheek, and bolts down the hallway.

She waits intently, flinching and looking around at every noise of the generator or a guard walking past three hallways down.

She waits.

`````

“ _Skaikru kom op!_ ” (Skaikru incoming!) someone at the gates shouts, and Lexa bolts from the room, Clarke’s cat at her tail.

She vaguely fears he may chase her to hunt, but soon enough he passes her, and slides to a halt just before the gates.

They open far too languidly, and Lexa squeezes through the opening the second she can.

Except there are only three people in front of her.

And none of them are Clarke.


	10. Opinion's Average

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys. I'll start this chapter off with the biggest thank you I can possibly offer through the screen of a computer. I know it has been far too long since I've posted a chapter, but what with school and practice and life in general, it seems I can't get more than a few words out every time I sit down at my computer. However, within the past two weeks, I've been dealing a lot with stress, which for me tends to lend itself to about two and a half hours of writing with no break.
> 
> Thus reveals this chapter.
> 
> BTW, chapter title comes from the quote "Opinions are the medium between knowledge and ignorance" -Plato. I know it's a bit off, but I felt it fitting considering the situation with Pike and Bellamy and all that. Anyways-
> 
> A huge thank you again to everyone who comments on this story. I honestly think if I didn't get the kind of feedback I do, I wouldn't continue writing this. So thank you.
> 
> **NOTICE: I have updated a small section within chapter 8 that I felt was rushed and needed a little more to fill in some simple plot holes that messed up my image of the story later on. It doesn't dramatically affect the main plot in any ways, but does give a bit more insight to the journey from Azgeda to TonDC.

When Clarke wakes, she is face to face with cold, distinct metal. The faint smell of iron, almost like the blood in her veins, floods through her nose. It smells damp, though she can’t make out the sounds of any water nearby. Clarke hears a soft clicking and the murmuring of a man’s voice, indefinite as he passes her location. 

Suddenly, upon opening her eyes, she finds herself to be face down on a metal grate. Below is a calmly shifting pool of water, reddish in color, with light hitting its small ripples from somewhere underneath her.

She assumes with blissful ignorance that that is _not_ why she smelled iron.

Slowly, she tries to pull her hands out in front to push up off the ground, but comes to find her hands bound behind her. Instead, she shifts onto her side, directly facing a plain wall, and pushes herself off of her shoulder to get into a sitting position.

It works, but if it weren’t for the harsh light suddenly invading her eyes, she would have actually seen the gun in front of her before she heard the recognizable sound of it loading a shot.

The harsh white around her fades slowly, but she finds she can’t see much out of her left eye. It feels swollen and clogged, to the point where only blurry shapes pass her view.

“Clarke Griffin.”

Her vision clears, and in front of her she sees the tell-tale image of a barrel sitting point blank in front of her face. She tenses in worry, but looks past the gun, up the dark hand of its owner, to find the aged, disappointed expression of Charles Pike.

Clarke opens her mouth to retort but coughs instead, and she lurches forward to let go of the blood that had been swelling in her mouth without her conscious knowledge.

A faint chuckle swims in her ears as she looks up from her hunched position. Pike stares down at her from above, only slightly higher in his crouched stance in front of her. He pushes his knee forward, in line with her cheek, and slowly puts pressure into putting her back on the ground where she had just risen. His knee burns on her cheek as he pushes her face to the ground again, and when her temple meets metal, he doesn’t stop pushing.

She spits quietly, still emptying her mouth of blood.

“How pathetic,” Pike begins, “That you came in here to get people out, only to get yourself stuck in. How truly pathetic.”

Clarke groans in response to his knee pushing harder against her cheek.

“Your mother told you about Marcus Kane, right? Walked around this place acting like he could save everyone, have peace with the savages who killed us, who kill each other. He died, did you know that? And your poor little play thing, Bellamy Blake, helped with it all.”

She feels tears swell up in her eyes, clogging the left even further, and making it nearly impossible to see clearly through her right.

Pike chuckles. “You see, Clarke, you might’ve thought you lead these people before, but I’m in control now, and you’re going to regret causing me trouble.”

He pulls away from her sharply, standing to look down at her from higher up. A faint smile graces his feature, but quickly he steels himself, and the last thing Clarke sees is his boot coming down on her face.

`````

Lexa is stunned.

“Where is Clarke?” she asks, painfully scanning the forest behind them for any movement that could be the sky girl.

She can’t find anything.

“Clarke’s gone,” Octavia mutters, shifting the _Skaikru_ engineer’s weight on her shoulder.

Lexa eyes them. Raven’s limp body is slung over Octavia’s shoulder, and Abby’s breath is heavy in her lungs. They all seem to heave with exhaustion.

“ _Weron Klark don gon we?_ ” (Where did Clarke go?) she practically spits.

Octavia holds eye contact, clearly understanding how dire the situation is, and Abby steps in.

“We were about to be caught. Clarke got us out, but she stayed behind to make sure we made it _all_ the way out.”

Lexa hardly glances at the chancellor, opting instead to glare at the prior _sekon_ (second) before her.

“ _Yu dula shil op Klark. Yu slip thru._ ” (Your job was to protect Clarke. You failed.)

Octavia’s eyes burn holes into the ground. “ _Moba biyo, Heda_.” (I’m so sorry, Heda)

The Commander watches the shame wash over Octavia.

The girl might hold a grudge against Clarke, but she’d do anything to belong in Trikru again, and she might have just ruined those chances.

Suddenly, Lexa’s anger redirects, and she shouts to those around her, “ _Hon in ai fechas!_ ” (Get my hounds!)

The cat at her side growls brutally in her show of anger, and she turns to the animal.

“ _Spichen pichu._ ” (Goddamn pet) Kou hesitantly calms his growling, and settles on glaring at the commander, but nevertheless follows her as she speeds back through the gates.

Raven grumbles from her place on Octavia’s shoulder. “What did she say?”

Octavia’s gaze doesn’t leave the ground.

“I’ve failed, and I think she might just kill all of Arkadia because of this.”

Both Raven and Abby are silent for a moment, until Raven breaks the silence yet again.

“What was with the cat?”

`````

She faintly hears her title being called.

“ _Heda!_ ” they say, but she can’t hear them over the sound of her own plan in her head.

She hears the title called again and she whips around before she’s even made it to the buildings of TonDC.

Indra walks briskly towards her, determined in her expression to speak to Lexa.

“ _Heda, chich ai?_ ” (Commander, a word?)

Lexa simply turns once again on heel towards her destination, and Indra quickly follows, already speaking in a low tongue. The cat rushes ahead, glancing behind every now and then.

“ _What do you wish to accomplish against_ Skaikru?”

Quietly, Lexa answers.

“Vengeance.”

Indra’s steps stutter, but she catches up. “ _Chit daun bilaik, Heda? Moun wor?_ ” (What’s that, Commander? Another war?)

At this, Lexa stops, and looks sharply over her shoulder to her closest general. “If you continue to speak against me in public then you will answer with your tongue. _Hod yu chichplei op._ ” (Stop talking)

Lexa continues, her heavy footsteps not slowing until she reaches a familiar door, and the wood strains under the pressure she puts into entering the room. Indra follows silently, shutting the door behind her and turning to the younger girl in front of her.

“ _Skaikru_ will pay,” Lexa begins, sharply. “For what they have done.”

“For what they have done? Taking one of their own people prisoner is cause for an entire war?” Indra counters.

“They have taken Clarke! Of all people, they will kill her first!” Lexa steps into Indra’s space, pushing chest to chest as she rages.

“They have taken someone who committed mutiny. And now you show weakness for a criminal,” she replies, calmly.

Lexa stops, staring into cold, hardened eyes. She steps back.

Looking down at the ground, Lexa mumbles, “Get out.”

`````

When she wakes up, she finds her face pressed once again into the metal below her. Painstakingly slow, she edges up onto her knees, and pushes her ankles out in front of her to lean into the wall behind her. Calmly, she stretches her weakened legs out in front of her, shifting her tied hands at the same time to provide a more comfortable sitting position.

She sits, trying to remember what happened.

_She had been waiting about as long as expected, but there was far too much noise to just be a few people running towards the exit._

_Though she heard the recognizable sound of Octavia’s puts on the metal floor of the Ark, she also heard the sound of men screaming in the background, an alarm suddenly picking up faintly._

_Her mother’s body comes sliding around the bend, her gas mask flinging loosely in her hands. Quickly following, Octavia runs with Raven’s limp body over her shoulder. Octavia’s mask is still secured tightly to her face, pointing to the fact that she might not have had time to get it off._

_“Clarke!” her mother yells, and she quickly shushes the woman, raising an eyebrow carefully at Octavia as she pulls open the exit with one hand._

_“Never trust Monty’s stupid plans,” Octavia says, muffled heavily by the mask around her face. She drops Raven to the ground, leaning her as gently but swiftly as possible against the wall before ripping the gas mask off of her face. “You’d think the boy could get three gas masks that actually all work!”_

_Ignoring her, Clarke begins guiding her mother through the exit, and as her body slides to the tunnel, a shout breaks out just around the bend. Octavia and Clarke both glance back, suddenly cautious of any noise they make. The alarm blares faintly in the distance, and Octavia reaches to grab Raven and hoists her over her shoulder once more. She shoves her head along with Raven into the tunnel, and looks back quickly, only then realizing Clarke seems to have no plans of moving._

_“Clarke,” she spits. “Get your ass in here before I make you.”_

_Clarke spins on her._

_“You need to leave, all three of you. Get out and go. I’ll make sure they don’t follow.”_

_“Clarke!” her mother yells from within the tunnel. Abby’s face appears from over Octavia’s shoulder._

_Another shout comes from the corner, louder this time._

_“I need to stay, this is my fault. Just get out and find Lexa, she’ll keep you safe.”_

_“Clarke,” Abby practically whimpers. “You can’t do this.”_

_“I need to,” she says, shaking her head. “Just find Lexa.”_

_The heavy sound of footsteps breaks out, and she can hear each soldier coming towards them. Quickly, Clarke pushes against Octavia, and moves to shut the door. The last look she gets at them is her mother’s panicked expression, and Octavia’s nod of approval before the door slams shut._

_Without a second thought, she steps forward towards the noise, waiting until the first speck of soldier uniforms pokes out, and sprints down the split away from them. She doesn’t look back, but she can hear the thunderous roar of boots and shifting guns follow closely behind her._

_Someone shouts her name._

_She hits a dead end and someone in their room opens their door next to her._

_A small boy, no older than ten, watches a _Skaikru_ soldier slam his gun into her shoulder, his knee into her ribcage, and his desperate scream of panic follows her into unconsciousness._

If she’s brutally honest with herself, she expected to be in a better condition.

Though she had known Pike almost all her life, especially with his past as a teacher on the Ark, she hadn’t expected the kind of violence he and his followers suddenly had.

`````

“I need the Sky People placed into—somewhere, as soon as possible,” Lexa commands as she enters the small tent Abby, Raven, and Octavia had been led to after they entered the gates.

“ _Heda?_ ” Indra asks, silently questioning where exactly Lexa means.

“Somewhere, anywhere. I do not care, just get them accommodations before I do it myself.”

Abby sends her a hesitant look, and Octavia stands next to a small bench where Raven sits, leg stretched out before her and a hand on her thigh. The mechanic’s eyes glare holes into her from the short distance, but she ignores it.

“ _Sha, Heda._ Should they be prepared for long term stay?”

Lexa stares silently at Abby, waiting for an answer. Instead, she gets a slight glare and more hesitation.

She sighs, briefly.

“I understand that I am not the most trustworthy of leaders, but I can assure you that you are welcome to stay within my territory for as long as you wish and will be protected to the best of my abilities within those boundaries. My people owe too much to Clarke to let her people rot away while a rebellion occurs.”

“ _Mochof, Heda,_ ” Octavia immediately replies, bowing forwards.

Lexa nods slightly in reply.

“You may visit Lincoln,” she states. “As far as I last heard, he is still with Nyko.”

The girl nods, and Lexa turns to leave. As she does so, however, she hears Abby’s voice call out to her.

“Commander, do you mind if we talk?”

She nods, mumbling, “ _Sha,_ ” on instinct and turns as she had originally intended, assuming Abby will follow her. The woman does, and the two exit the tent.

To Lexa’s shock, she finds Clarke’s cat sitting stiffly at the doorway, only a foot away from her guard—who, quite frankly, looks petrified of the animal—looking out into the village. Upon her exit, he pushes up on his hind legs and walks forward without even glancing at her.

She scoffs slightly at his behavior.

 

“Does what you wish to speak about require a closed audience, or may we speak as we walk?” Lexa questions.

“I wanted to ask about Clarke,” the woman mutters, straight to the point.

Lexa stiffens, barely even willing on her own to consider the state she found the girl in.

Kou glances back at the mention of the girl.

“She was not well,” she states. “And that is all I am willing to discuss without her permission.”

Abby looks stunned for a moment, clearly anticipating something else.

“Commander, I just need to know if she was sick, if she might die in there because of something wrong.”

Lexa stops, noticing how fast Kou stops with her. She stares at Abby, checking to see if she is serious.

_She is_ , she decides.

“Your daughter,” Lexa begins. “Is physically fine. But Clarke believes she alone is the cause for hundreds of deaths. That being said, though I cannot even begin to fathom how strong that girl is, I do believe that if they exploit her, she will fall victim to her own state of mind. I cannot be sure how long she may remain _fine_ with what she has been through. Is that satisfactory?” She doesn’t wait for a verbal response. When Abby so much as tilts her head forward, Lexa is turning over her shoulder to walk with Kou at her heel towards her own tent.

`````

No one bothers her for a while.

The light bleeds from underneath the grate, and she can see the transition into night time, though the florescent light of her cell stays flickering. Clarke sits, chin pushed into her chest, waiting.

“Clarke?”

She hears it suddenly, a whisper of her name from in front of her. She looks up, slightly, enough to find the form of Bellamy Blake standing in front of her.

“Bellamy,” she says it like a call, an old friend finally face to face.

“My God, Clarke. What are you doing here?” He bends forward as he says it, pulling out a set of keys and reaching around to her back to undo the chains around her wrist.

“I had to do something. Bellamy…”

He glances up, pulling the chains away and setting them onto the ground.

“Bellamy,” she says again. “What do you think you’re doing?”

His eyes connect with her in confusion. “Unchaining you? Pike said you were here and that he had you locked up for aggravated assault. Something about breaking our most prized prisoners out.”

She shakes her head.

“What are you doing with Pike?”

He’s silent for a moment, then says, clearly, “What needs to be done.”

“What needs to be done?” she asks, incredulously. “By executing Kane? Locking up my mother, our friend? By shooting your sister?”

At the last one, he looks up, fear in his eyes.

“What?”

“They shot Lincoln and Octavia, outside the gates. They tried to come back into camp and they shot at them.”

“Is she ok?” His voice in laced with concern.

She sits up straighter, he falls back from his heels to sit in front of her.

“I had to treat Lincoln, Octavia is ok…”

Bellamy visibly relaxes at the news.

“But Bellamy—“

“I’m doing what needs to be done…to make sure everyone in Arkadia is safe.”

He says the words so clearly, so definitively, she almost believes them herself. But she remembers what those grounders looked like in cages. Clarke knew that some of them had been there for months, bled nearly to death. She remembers the eyes of innocent children who grew up in a society driven by torture.

As much as she hates herself for it, she knows it wasn’t the grounders who killed those people.

“What are you trying to accomplish?” she mutters.

“We’re trying to keep the Ark safe. We need the grounders to bow down in order to do that.”

“Bow down? How do you expect to do that? We don’t have the mass to do that, or the influence, or the weapons.”

He stiffens, and she feels fear flood into her body.

“Clarke, Mount Weather had weapons, tons. They had a nuclear bomb, and now we have it.”

“Bellamy…” she hisses. “What the fuck are you doing? You are going to wipe out an entire civilization, ourselves included!”

He pushes forward, shushing her as he shoves his hand over her mouth.

“You need to be quiet. I’m not even supposed to be here.”

“Then why are you?” she spits when her mouth is free.

“I needed to check on you. No one has seen you in months, Clarke.” The genuine concern in her voice touches her, but her anger takes over.

“You know why I did that, Bellamy. Because I killed those people, and I can’t live with myself looking into the eyes of _our_ people and seeing disgust and disappointment because of my actions.”

Bellamy’s eyes blaze with emotion when he speaks.

“That’s not your fault. Lexa left us in Mount Weather to die. We had no other choice!”

“Yes we did!” she shouts, pushing up on her heels to lean towards Bellamy. “But I couldn’t think of anything when I was standing there with a gun to Dante Wallace’s head and a hand on a lever that would kill three hundred and eighty-two people.”

She stops, breathing heavily.

“I did that…not Lexa.”

His eyes are cold, and he sits still in front of her.

“I have a job to do now, Clarke.”

He reaches forward, latches a chain onto her left wrist, and leaves her alone once more.


	11. Conversation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lexa takes Abby to Polis and Bellamy begins to realize the truth of his situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey howdy hey! Thank you for the comments I've received and the support I've gotten. I appreciate it, as it helps me to motivate myself to continue writing this story. 
> 
> I'm on spring break this whole next week, so I will attempt to spend as much time as possible developing the next chapter and hopefully, I'll have it up before another month goes by :b
> 
> Thank you again for the support. Hope you enjoy this chapter!

They move her somewhere else. 

With a blindfold over her eyes, as if that makes any difference, Bellamy’s rough hands push on her back, as gentle as a boy desensitized by the ground can be. He leads her, quietly mumbling directions as they go, but she knows the Ark. She knows Alpha Station.

Bellamy unlocks a single handcuff from her right wrist, pulls off the blindfold, and slams the door with a bang before she can even adjust to the light.

She locks the open handcuff with the other onto her left wrist, destined to wear the chains of leadership on her arm.

Normally, if she were still in space, she might be able to distinguish the walls of her room as some location she recognizes. She might be able to recognize the crack in the bed frame, or the small splatter of stain embedded in the metal in the corner of the room. If she were still in space, she could tell you this was her parents old room, but now—

This place is a prison.

`````

“Charles Pike was relatively peaceful before the ground,” Abby informs the Commander. “For the most part, none of us would have expected him to be capable of spreading hate the way he has.”

Raven shifts in the corner of the tent, Octavia at her side.

“Well he has done so now, and I need a plan.” Lexa’s eyes burn with lack of sleep, but she glares into the _Skaikru_ ’s eyes with confidence. “He is your people, Abby. As much as you dislike my people’s ways, I’m sure even something like this would not go unpunished on your _Ark_.”

Abby looks down. 

“He would have been killed by now.” She quiets. “But…this isn’t the Ark, Commander. We shouldn’t need to kill.”

“You’re right. This isn’t your Castle in the Sky, Abby, which means things are different. You sent down one hundred innocent children to die here, and things changed the second they hit the ground and did not suffocate. You landed in my territory, and if you do not wish to _die_ , I suggest you adapt.”

Abby’s brow furrows, and she looks confused for a second, glancing hesitantly at Octavia. She looks up at Lexa.

“Some of those children were far from innocent, Commander… _some_ of them anyways.” Abby shakes her head, mumbling, “We had no other option but to send them.”

At this, Lexa frowns, clearly misunderstanding the significance of something she said.

“We were prisoners, _Heda_ ,” Octavia interrupts.

Lexa looks at her, silently allowing her to continue.

“Everyone under eighteen was sent to the Sky Box until they were old enough to face another trial for their crime. The point was to give us another chance but…most of us were killed once we turned eighteen anyways.”

The Commander is quiet, putting the pieces together in her own head.

_The revolts. The attitude. The necessity. Clarke’s beliefs that the Ark was not her people. The 100 were her people._

She squints, glaring at the space between Octavia and Abby.

“Your crime?” She looks to Octavia.

“You were only allowed a single child. I was the second,” she says, eyes flickering to Abby.

Lexa hesitates to ask her next question.

“And what was _Klark kom Skaikru_ ’s crime?”

Both Raven and Octavia stare at Abby, waiting for the answer.

She is quiet, then—

“Treason.”

`````

“Clarke?”

Her mind clears at the hesitant voice in front of her.

She starts.

“Miller?!”

Clarke leaps up onto her feet. She had been leaning against the wall, mindlessly playing with a loose string on her long sleeve top. She nearly trips when she pulls the boy into a tight hug.

Ever gentle as he is, Nathan hugs her back.

“Clarke, what are you doing here?”

“Pike took me in. I was trying to help,” she looks down as she says it. “I guess the question is what are you doing here?” 

She broadly gestures to her room and at that moment notices the guard uniform that Nathan wears. Clarke can tell the moment he recognizes the look on her face.

Suddenly, he lurches forward, placing a hand over her mouth as he looks around frantically. She struggles for a moment, but he doesn’t move other than to bring his index finger to his mouth, silently telling her to shush. He barely pushes against her other than to keep his hand over her mouth.

“I’m not with them,” he whispers, barely above a breath. “But I can’t have you questioning why I’m working with Pike out loud. You’ll get me killed.”

Calmly, she nods her head in understanding and he slowly releases his grip over her mouth.

“How have you been Miller?” she asks with a glance over his shoulder, trying to divert the subject at least a little. “I’m glad to see you made it out of Farm Station after all.”

He nods, smiling slightly, and Clarke finds a distance in his eyes that she knows all too well.

“What’s wrong with Bryan?”

His eyes widen slightly.

“Nothing! We’re fine! He’s just—“ he hushes, “—on the wrong side of things these days.”

“Hey!” someone calls, and Clarke faintly recognizes Bellamy’s voice down the hall outside of her cell. “Miller! It’s time to switch!”

Nathan suddenly looks stressed, and he turns to her, placing a hand gently on her shoulder.

“Hey…” he mumbles. “I can’t promise anything but…I’ll try to make your life a little easier in here. It won’t be long before we get things moving.”

She mumbles a “thanks,” but Nathan has already turned around, calling as he walks out to Bellamy.

And on his jacket, too quiet for the human ear to pick up on—

The bug hums.

`````

“I don’t see how this is going to help anyone!” Abby marches, angrily, behind Lexa and Indra. Octavia trails quietly behind them.

“I don’t see how you have any right to question my decisions,” Lexa responds, low and angry.

“It is my right when this is the stake of my people at your hands!”

Her jaw twitches and Lexa stops, turning around to face Abby.

“I am not besieging on your people, _Abi kom Skaikru_. But something must be done before your self-proclaimed leader sends all of your people to death!”

Abby is quiet, fixed in place.

Lexa glares at her. “You are not your daughter, Abby. You have no say in this.”

`````

“Clarke?” Bellamy’s voice rings out.

Clarke hears it through the fog of her mind. In front of her sits a stocked plate of food: water, a piece of bread, and some eggs, long since cold from the air of her cell. She leans against the wall behind her, head hunched and elbows up on her knees. The cuffs hang heavy on her left wrist. She is barely conscious.

Bellamy notices immediately as he opens the cell door.

Nearly tripping to get to her, he pushes her arms out of the way and they fall limp at her sides. Her head rolls to the side and he grabs her cheeks, whispering her name.

She groans, softly, barely on the edge of consciousness.

He turns around, reaching for the water at his side and knocks the plate aside in the process. Grabbing the cup of water, he raises it to her lips, pushing her head back slowly.

At first, the water spills over the side of her mouth and down her neck, but suddenly she seems to gain some sense of reality and weakly grabs at the cup to drink.

She gets a few gulps in before she passes back out.

The skin under her cuffs is red and raw.

When she wakes again, Bellamy is sitting on the opposite side of the cell, staring at his fidgeting hands in his lap.

“Bellamy?” she croaks, reaching out for the full cup of water in front of her. The plate of food she remembers being there is gone.

“Were you trying to kill yourself?” he mumbles, seemingly lost in his thoughts.

“What?”

She is startled, assuming he asks about her time in the woods. She assumes he means when she left.

_Yes,_ she answers in her head.

“We give you food here for a reason, Clarke. So that you don’t die of malnourishment!”

She stares at him in confusion for a moment.

_No._

“I’ve been here for over a week,” she starts, already seeing the anger radiating off of him. “There are other things I need to be doing but…I’m here instead.”

“Other things? You thought wasting away was how to get to these other things?”

She pushes up into a better sitting position against the wall. The cuffs rattle at her wrist. She feels rather than sees Bellamy’s eyes on her wrist, she feels the burning of raw skin.

“I thought it would get me some real attention.” She smirks, ever so slightly, and she feels almost like Lexa in that moment; she feels strong, confident, in her element.

She is good at manipulating.

“Looks like it worked,” he mumbles and she nods in response. “Why do you need attention?”

“What you’re doing here, Bellamy is not ok. You’re going to get all of Arkadia killed.”

His shoulders tense.

“By who? Lexa? The Grounders?” 

Her smirk falls and she nods in response, but this only seems to make him angrier.

“Those monsters left us, Clarke! They deserve what we’ll bring to them!”

The chain of the cuffs slides against her hip when she leans forward.

“All we have is guns and a goddamn bargaining tool! Do you even know if that bomb works?! If your plan to demolish the rest of the living world will even work?!” Clarke can feel the burning of tears in her eyes, but she refuses to let them fall.

He seems to lose himself for a moment. He pushes off of his knees and against the wall behind him, rising to face her. The gun at his hip clanks with the metal of his uniform. “The plan around that bomb is classified information, Clarke.”

“Bullshit!” She yells as she rises to her feet as well. Clarke heads for his space, moving until tension seems to pull against her chest, keeping her back. She is nearly in front of him. “I’m already locked up, right? Who am I going to tell!”

“It works, Clarke.” He lets the words sink in for a moment. “We have the bomb, and it works perfectly fine.”

She can feel the ball drop in her stomach, dread and fear and panic rising up in her chest to fill her lungs. Clarke breathes, heavily.

In one, out, in twice, out.

The silence weighs heavily on the room.

“I had to leave…” she whispers, and the tears begin to fall. “You know that right? After what I did? I couldn’t stay.”

He seems to pick up on what she means and steps a bit closer to her.

“Clarke…” he mumbles, almost ashamed.

“After what I did, I needed to go. I thought you would be ok while I was gone, you specifically. I thought you would take care of everyone here.” The tears cloud her voice and she moves her arms desperately. “Instead you’re trying to get us all killed!”

His eyes darken. “You can’t peg that on me, Clarke! You’re the one who left me with this! When have I ever been the good decision? You left me! Abandoned me with this—this weight to deal with! That’s your fault.”

“I was going to heal!” She calms, sighs, lowering her head. “I was going to go, so that I could come back eventually a better leader. I was going to learn how to be someone I loved again…but now I’m here.”

He stops for a moment, looking at her in confusion.

“What do you mean you were going to ‘go?’” he mutters.

She hesitates.

“Polis…I was supposed to try to heal there. I wanted to learn about Grounders, Bellamy. I wanted to learn what there is to their culture besides fighting.” She looks up at him. “Lexa was going to help me do that, but like I said, I’m here now.”

“What’s so bad about staying in Arkadia?”

At this, she leans forward, voice raising slightly. “I’m stuck in a cell, Bellamy! Hating myself! That’s what Arkadia is to me now. It is pain and _betrayal_ , and you are a part of that.”

His eyes flash with hurt, and she feels no remorse. Bellamy stands, slowly, pushing off of his knees to look down at her with concern.

“Let me see if I can get you out of here,” he begins. “I doubt you’ll be able to go everywhere but…at least you won’t be stuck here.”

And with that, he leaves.

`````

“Your friend is clouding your judgment, Bellamy,” Pike mutters. He settles into his seat gently, setting a foot across his knee.

“It’s Clarke. I can’t just ignore what she tells me.”

“So you’ll let her change you completely?”

Bellamy shakes his head slowly.

“I just want her to be able to do something. She shouldn’t be a prisoner. She deserves more than to be locked up after what she’s done for us here.”

Pike turns to reach for the gun at his side, pulling the shoulder strap up over his head.

“She’s a child, Bellamy. Same as you.” He adjusts the gun slightly. “Children have no authority here.”

He brushes past Bellamy towards the door.

“Now get back to work.”

`````

Polis looks empty in the early hours of the morning, before the sun rises and before the markets begin humming with business.

Lexa wishes she could have shown Clarke the city at this time. At the moment, it feels wrong to enter the city without fulfilling the promise of bringing Clarke with.

Instead, she is lost to her own people.

Abby travels idly behind her on her horse. She doesn’t even try to look at the awe on Abby’s face. Indra and Octavia had stayed in TonDC to wait for any sign from Arkadia— _Any sign for Clarke_ —and in their stead, Abby had joined her on her journey back to Polis, and Lexa hopes the trip will be worth it. 

She intends to keep the trip short, only here to convene with the ambassadors in Polis. Abby will be the stand in for Skaikru, hopefully not to be cut short by an angry ambassador.

Lexa reminds herself that the goal is only to inform them. As much as she prides herself in keeping a rational head, she doesn’t want to hurt Clarke. 

_I don’t want war,_ she tells herself.

_I want Clarke._

_I don’t want war._

_**I want Clarke.**_

The sun rises as the horses clack through Polis towards the tower in the center of the city. It’s flame at the top is unlit, but as the sun’s light begins to peak over the horizon, she knows the flames will rise with it. Suddenly, as every morning, the fire swells at the top of the tower, and she watches it peacefully, ignoring Abby’s questions behind her. The flames burn brightly as the start of a new day wakes the people of Polis.

This is what it means to be a leader.

This is the fire she brings to her people at the beginning of each day.

This is the life she wishes to preserve.

_I don’t want war._

_I want Clarke._

`````

Within a few hours of entering the city, Lexa has called an immediate meeting between the ambassadors of the Coalition. Abby, though no an ambassador herself, agrees to join the meeting. Lexa hopes Abby’s acceptance is a step towards peace between the Coalition and Arkadia.

“ _Heda_ ,” the ambassador from the Boudalan clan, Jedrik, greets her upon entering the main room of the Polis tower. 

“ _Os_ ,” (Literally: good; Shortcut: good to see you) she mumbles in passing. Others mumble her title as well as she makes her way past the table at the center of the room to take her place on her throne at the head of the meeting. 

Abby briefly hesitates in entering the room, but upon doing so receives simple questioning glances from the ambassadors. The only handmaiden in the room steps forward to gracefully pull an empty chair to the side of the room for the Skaikru member, and the ambassadors begin to take their seats at the table. 

“ _Bandronas_ ,” (Ambassadors) Lexa begins, having yet to take her own seat. “I hope today that you will all be gracious enough to conduct this meeting in _Gonasleng_ due to our current addition to this room, _Abi kom Skaikru_. She has yet to learn our language enough to understand.”

Voices ring out, agreeing with their commander, and Abby makes enough eye contact with Lexa to understand the irritation at her inability to understand their native language. She ignores it with an excuse of a lack of time.

“ _Heda?_ ” the leader of Boudalan speaks.

“ _Sha._ ”

“May I ask, as I’m sure others wish to, why a member of Skaikru is present at a meeting of the _Coalition_ ambassadors?”

Lexa glances over the room briefly.

“Well, if I may begin, I’m sure you all will understand quite quickly…”

`````

Days later and multiple meetings in, Lexa feels exhaustion heap over her shoulders and a worry unlike any other settling in her bones.

She feels off.

_Another meeting past, egos to manage, Abby likes to make her opinions known._

“ _Heda!_ ” Indra’s voice rings loud and clear through the throne room.

Lexa has the instinct to feel fear because _Indra is not supposed to be here,_ but ignores the thought to rise from her throne. The Skaikru doctor stands in front of Lexa, previously engrossed in a conversation that Indra had interrupted.

Lexa pushes off of her throne and rushes down the steps to meet Indra. 

She is out of breath.

“Indra…” she questions. “Is there news of Skaikru?”

“ _Nou jus Skaikru, Heda…_ ” She breathes for a moment. “ _Wanheda. Komba raun Okteivia kom Skaikru._ ” (Not just Skaikru, Commander. Wanheda. Coming here with Octavia of Skaikru).

She faintly hears Abby’s question behind her, but her head is flooding instead with _Clarke, Clarke, Clarke_ and she needs to see her.

“Where are they, Indra? Where is Clarke?”

“Clarke?” Abby’s voice rings out.

“ _Raun Polis dou, Heda._ ” (Near the Polis gates, Commander).

Without another thought, and surely not a glance to the questioning mother behind her, Lexa takes off out the doors.

At first, she attempts to hold the ends of her robes off of the ground, grunting in frustration when she trips on the ends of her cape. Then, nearly yelling out, she rips the pauldron from her shoulder and tosses it to the ground. Behind, she can hear Indra’s boots catching up to her as she shuffles to remove her marks as _Heda._ Lexa pushes her arms from her jacket and the entire mass of fabric falls to the floor in a heap. Left in nothing but her bottoms and a tight shirt, she sprints down the hallway to the stairs.

Indra shouts behind her for the _veida_ (elevator), but she knows how long it takes to bring the machine to the top of the tower. She’s better off taking the steps of the giant building two at a time to reach the bottom.

When she can see the light at the base of the tower, she hits the ground hard and pushes off past her guards to burst out into the city of Polis.

Questions ring out.

_Why is Heda running?_

_Where is she going?_

_What is happening?_

_Are we under attack?_

Lexa hears them as she passes through the crowd of the marketplace, determined to reach the gates. A guard shouts behind her. She instinctively shouts back at him.

“Get me a horse!”

He stops his running and hops in place, hesitant, then takes off in a different direction. She keeps heading for the gates and halts when she reaches the looming entrance to the city. Lexa stops before the guard can return with a horse, but he rides up soon nonetheless as she stands, staring out into the wilderness outside of Polis.

She is waiting for a sound.

She does not answer the questions of the scouts that line the walls.

She is waiting.

And when Octavia bursts through the trees on a horse, a mass of fur and anger running behind her and shouting for a healer, Clarke slumped against her front, Lexa mounts the horse as quick as she has ever.

Even in war has she never mounted a horse faster.

She shouts for Octavia to follow her and kicks off her horse to take her back through the city.


End file.
